CHAPTER XXI.

I DO not remember how I found my way back to Rome. I lost sight of Maryx. I was clearly conscious of nothing till I felt the wet tongue of Palès against my cheek and found that I was sitting on my own old bench beside my stall in the moonlight by the bridge. I suppose he must have brought me home. I do not know; I had forgotten him. Perhaps he had forgotten me: why not?

It was night, and the place was deserted. There was no one about, only some girl from an open window above in the street was singing aloud a love-song. I could have choked her throat into silence. It is not wonderful that there is so much crime on earth; it is rather wonderful that there is so little, seeing how much pain there is, pain that is the twin brother of madness.

It was the middle of the night. I think two or three days had gone by. I cursed the stones of the street because they had borne his steps, and the waters under the arches because they had not risen and swallowed him.

Ah, God! in our hate (as in our love) how we feel our own cramped littleness! we stretch our arms for the whole universe to give us vengeance, and the grand old dome of the sky seems to echo with inextinguishable laughter. Ah, God! why are our hearts so great, our years so few and feeble? Therein is all the mockery and cruelty of life!

I sat there like a stupid frozen thing, the vast mighty heavens above me, the heavens that should have been full of | | 245 weeping angels and of avenging swords, if there were any more heed of human souls, there, than of the ants that crawl along black dust on a white summer way.

The dog kissed me, moaning, full of woe, because she knew that I was so.

I rose to my feet.

The Apollo Sandaliarius shone white in the moon-rays. Surely it was only yesterday that she had come to me there, having her hands on my stall with the passion-flower and the poppy in them,--the flower of death?

Surely it was but yesterday that I had dreamed my dream in Borghese?

Then I looked at my things in the drawer under my stall. The dog had guarded everything safely, being fed, no doubt, by the neighbors.

There was in the drawer a long slender-pointed knife,--a blade of steel made in past ages, and very keen; I had used it to cut through the skins of leather. I put it in my breast, where it is most at home with a Roman.

After all, there was no other vengeance than the poor simple trite one, all too short, that never could quench the thirst of man yet, nor wash out any wrong; there was no other. The skies did not fall, the stars did not pause in their courses. I looked at them. It seemed to me strange. I felt the edge of the knife and waited for morning. There was only the old, old way.

"May death never come when you call on it!" said the old murdered man, Servianus, dying, to Hadrian. And in the after-time Hadrian did cry on death to relieve him, and death would not come; not even his own hirelings would give the blow at his command; and Servianus was avenged.

But then Servianus never saw his vengeance.

I would see mine, or, rather, hers; so I told myself.

I was old, but I was strong enough for this.

I waited for the morning.

Of Maryx I had no thought.

I only saw the ship going away, away, away, over the shining silent sea in the clear daylight, with the white sails against the blue.

When the morning broke, I went across the river, and across the fields, still misty and wreathed with fog, to officers of the Vatican.

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"You have offered me often many ducats for my Greek Hermes: give me them now, and take him," I said to them,--I, who had never sold the smallest fragment or the rustiest relic of the arts I loved. They closed with me eagerly, having for many a year desired that fair Greek thing for the great gallery they call the Pio Clementino.

"Put him next your Ariadne!" I said to them, and laughed aloud in that grave palace of the Pope. They thought me mad, no doubt; but they desired the statue, and they took no heed of me.

I sold him without looking on him, as a man in a pagan land may sell a cherished son. But I had ceased to care for him: he was a dumb dead thing to me,--a carven stone. The thought of any statue froze my blood.

They fetched him down with oxen and men, bearing his beautiful tender snow-white limbs along the streets, where of course he must have passed so often in other ages, throned and garlanded in such processions of the gods as Ovid and his ladies loved to watch.

I never looked at him,--not once; I clutched the money that the guardians of the galleries gave me, and signed something they pushed to me, and hurried out into the air. Bells were ringing, and the sun was bright. I felt dizzy, and deaf, and blind.

Hermes woke all mortals from sleep with his wand at the break of the day. Oh that he had not wakened me!

I clutched my wealth that I had bought with my bartered god as with some human life, and felt for my long narrow knife in the folds of my shirt, and hurried away on my quest.

I had no clue to guide me, for the sea is wide, and its shores are many. Yet I had no doubt but that I should find them,--no doubt at all; and so I passed out of Rome. And Hermes was set in the great gallery, with the leonine head of a Jupiter Axur beside him, and at his feet a jasper basin of Assyria, in which Semiramis might once have bathed.

It does not matter where I wandered, or how I fared; I went on no clue whatever save the well-known name of Hilarion; but whosoever has any sort of fame has lighted a beacon that is always shining upon him, and can never more return into the cool twilight of privacy, even when most he is | | 247 wishes; it is of these retributions--some call them compensations--that life is full.

Hilarion, living always, whether he would or not, in the red light of that beacon-fire, was not very difficult to track. I went my ground over and over, indeed, and made many a needless journey, but I had the money for my Hermes, which was a large sum, and more than enough; and so it came to pass that in the full heat of June, that sweetest month, when the stars are so many and every soul on earth it seems ought to be glad, I found him in Venice.

There in the shallow salt lagoons was riding his own pleasure-vessel, the ship with the white sails. They said it was about to bear him eastward, to the old enchanted lands of the East.

The city was lovely then in the full summer. I knew it well, and in my day had been happy there. Now it appeared to me hateful.

Its water streets were once familiar to me as the ways of Rome, and I had learned to row the fruit-boat to and fro, gorgeous with the autumn colors of their freight and the beauty of the women of the Lido; now it was horrible to me.

The silence seemed like the awful stillness of a God-forgotten world; the gliding water seemed like the silvery sliding course of serpents; the salt-scented beach of the marshy shores seemed like the sulphurous dank mists of the awful world where Persephone mourned.

I stumbled along the narrow footpaths of the place, and the song of the boatmen and the laughter of the little children, dancing and dabbling on the edges of the canals, jarred through my brain, as in other years the like must have jarred on the heavy pains of the condemned creatures in the cells beneath the water-line.

I had no definite thought except to take his life.

The purpose had gone with me in my bosom; had lain with me by night; had grown to be a very part and parcel of myself, going with me over the blossoming lands in the summer of the year, lying down with me, and rising with me,--the last memory and the first.

It had no horror for me.

I was a Roman, and to me vengeance was duty; beyond all other duty when it was vengeance for the innocent. I did | | 248 not reason about it; I only said to myself that he should die. It was easy to find the palace where he dwelt; any one of the idlers of the street could show it me. He was famous. The house was in a large street; a great old palace, fretted and fantastic, gilded and carved, and majestic, looming over the thread of dull waters in gorgeous sombreness, as it had loomed there in blind Dandolo's own day.

Generally, everything passed near without entering this narrow, silent way: it was out of the thread of traffic. There was a great bell tolling heavily from a tower near, and a flock of pigeons in the air, and the scent of lilies: these I noticed at the time. My sight was quite clear, and my brain, too: all I thought of was, where I should strike him!

If he would only come out into the air!----

I sat down in an angle of the stonework and waited. It was very early: no one noticed me,--an old man mooning by the water's side. I watched the house: she, of course, was there, but, strangely, I never thought of her then: my mind was intent, and solely intent, on him.

When you have said to yourself that you will kill any one, the world only seems to hold yourself and him, and God,--who will see the justice done.

The lofty doors of the palace were open; one could see straight up the marble steps into the courts and the halls: they were all vast, and cool, and solitary; not a soul seemed there. Perhaps the people of the streets had misled me? I rose and climbed the stone stairs, and entered the halls. I suppose some hours had gone by; the sun was vertical, the porphyry shone red in it, and the yellow marble was like brass. I remember that as I trod on them.

There was no sound. I ascended the staircase, lined with the forms of giants and of heroes in the paled and peeling fresco of an heroic time. I held my knife closer, and mounted step after step. What if he heard? so best, if it brought him forth. I would have stabbed him before an armed multitude; for I had no desire to live after him.

I went on up the stately stairs and the painted landing-places; there was a long gallery in front at the head of the stairs, and many doors. I opened the one that was nearest to me; he might be there: if not, I might learn of some one.

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The chamber was immense, as our rooms are; the light that fell through it was of all kinds of hues from falling through the glass of painted casements. I went on across half its length, over its polished floor of many-colored stones; there came on my ear a sudden cry of welcome,--low, surprised, and happy as the summer cry of any bird. In the lily-scented air, in the halo of colored sunlight, she sprang up before me, glad and beautiful as any human thing could ever be, clothed in white, with a golden fillet on her forehead, and at her breast a knot of crimson carnations.

I stood still, stupefied and afraid. I had forgotten her.

"Dear friend! is it you?" she cried, with a pure and happy tone in her voice.

How shall I tell the change that had passed over her? Just such a change as I had seen when, in my dream, the bronze of the Borghese had blushed and moved and started into sudden life. Not greater the change upon the face of earth when from the still gray silvery dawn, in which the stars are trembling, the glory comes, and the sun shines over the hills.

What is it that love does to a woman? Without it she only sleeps; with it alone she lives.

Never in all my years have I seen happiness so perfect, so exquisite, so eloquent without a word, as was in her face, her air, her very limbs and movements. Before, she had been lovely as the statues were, and like them mute and cold, and scarcely human; now her eyes were like the light of day, her mouth was like the dew-wet rose, her whole form seemed to thrill with the grace and the gladness and the glory and the passion of life.

I stood before her stupidly and dumb.

"Dear friend, is it you?" she said, and came and took my hands and smiled.

What could I say to her? I had come to kill him.

"I must have seemed so thankless in my silence," she said, softly. "It hurt me to keep silence; but he wished it so."

I drew my hands away. I hated her to touch me.

"You are happy, then?" I said, and was dumb, staring upon her, for there were in her such power, such loveliness, | | 250 such radiance,--and all the while she was looking in my eyes with the sweet candor of a fearless innocence.

"Happy!" she smiled, as she echoed the word.

No doubt it seemed so poor to her, and feeble to measure all she felt. Then all the old pride came into her eyes.

"He loves me!" she said, under her breath; as if that said all.

"Do you remember I wanted to know what happiness was?" she said, after a little while. "Do you remember my asking the girls under the trees by Castel Gondolfo? As if one could ever know until----"

Then the warm color stole over her face, and she smiled, and the dreamy wondering look I knew so well came into her eyes, and she seemed to forget me.

I stood gripping the handle of my knife. I could not take my gaze from her. She seemed transfigured. To such a creature as this, in the fresh glory of her joy, what could one say of shame, and of the world's scorn, and of her wrongs, and of the mockery of women?

Then her eyes came back from their musing towards me, and her thoughts with them.

"And did you come to find me? That is so good! You were always so good, and I seem always thankless. I wished to tell you; but he would not. And Maryx too, it must have seemed to him, also, so thankless. Only now he will know; he will understand.

"You look at me strangely! Are you tired?" she added, as I kept silence. "Why will you stand? Are you angered?"

"Are you happy? I said, hoarsely. How could I say to her, "I came to kill your seducer"?

"Am I?" she said, very low, under her breath. "What! when he loves me? Do you remember?--I was always afraid of Love, because it is all one's life, and one is no more oneself, but breathes through another's lips, and has no will any more, and no force. But now I know: there is no other thing worth living for or dying for; there is no other life. Do you remember?--I used to wonder why women looked so happy, and why they used to go and pray with wet eyes, and why the poets wrote, and the singers sung. Now I know: there is only one good on all the earth, and it is more beautiful to love than even to be loved."

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Then a sudden blush came all over her cheek and throat and she paused suddenly, ashamed, as if some beauty of her form had been suddenly laid bare to curious eyes.

"Come and look!" she said, and touched my hand with hers; and it seemed to me as though flame burnt me; and she went on a little way across the chamber, and drew back a curtain of brocade with heavy fringes, and signed me to pass beneath it.

Quite mechanically and stupidly I followed her, and on the other side of the curtain I saw a lovely eight-sided vaulted room, like many of the palace-rooms in our own Rome, and here there were marbles white and gray, and clay, and the tools of sculpture; and the light was pouring in from a high casement that faced the sea.

"Look!" she said, and showed me a statue, only in the clay as yet, but very beautiful.

It would be difficult to tell where its infinite beauty lay.

You can describe a picture, but not a statue. Marble is like music: it can never be measured or told of in words. What can any one know of the beauty of the Belvedere Mercury, who has not looked up in its face?

The solitary figure was Love; but the loveliest and noblest Love that ever human hand had fashioned, surpassing even the perfect Thespian Love of Borghese. All the passion of the whole world, and all the dreams of lovers, and all the visions of heaven that have ever come to poets in their sleep, were in the languor of its musing eyes and in the smile of its closed lips.

"What can all earth and all eternity bestow worth one hour that I give?" this great Love asked you by a look.

Yet the face was only the face of Hilarion,--but that face transfigured as those eyes which worshiped him beheld it; unlike the face of any mortal; great as godhead, and glorious as the morning.

I stood in silence.

I could have struck the statue down, and cleft it from head to foot, as the false god it was. But then it was god to her.

She looked at it, and then at me, and sank upon a block of stone that stood there near, ruffling back her dusky gold of curls, and smiling, while the carnations fell out from her bosom at Love's feet.

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"Look! this he knows that I have done, for he has seen it grow under my hands out of the mere moist earths; and now he does believe. Look! you will tell Maryx. It is greater than anything I ever did,--that I know; but it is because I look up in his face and find it there. He is glad, because he knows that it is mine, and he says they will say, 'No girl's hand ever made that.' What does it matter if they think so? he knows! and then when they say that it is beautiful, after all it will be him whom they praise, and if it should live after me, long long ages, like the Faun, people will not think of me, but only of him, and they will tell one another his name,--not mine. And that is what I pray for always. Who can care for fame for oneself alone? But to tell the world in all that Hereafter that one never will see, how beautiful was what we loved, so that even when one is dead one will seem to live for them and to serve them,--that is almost like immortality. Oh, the gods were good when they gave me that power, for in all the other ages I shall be able to make men see what he is now, and all that he is to me!"

Then she laughed, a sweet little low laughter, the tears of an exceeding joy wet upon her eyelids all the while; and she bent and kissed the feet of the statue.

"Maryx used to say that Love killed Art," she murmured. "You will tell him now,--oh, how I pity him, that he does not know what love is!"

And softly she kissed again the feet of her god. Then, with a sudden flush over all her throat and bosom, for it was unlike her to show any emotion, or to pour forth thought in open words, she sat still on the block of stone at the base of the Love, with dreaming suffused eyes and silent lips.

"It will be in marble soon," she said, after a space. "I shall carve it all with my own hands: no one shall touch it in any line. I can 'hew the rocks,' you know. Maryx was so good to teach me. This will be great,--that I can feel; but then I have had only to look in his face."

What could I say to her? her innocence was so perfect, so perfect her joy and her pride; and to speak to her of the world, and the ways of its men and its women, seemed like a very blasphemy.

And the statue was great.

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Perhaps she had only looked in his face, but she had seen it through the greatness of her own passion and of her own soul.

She rose quickly and put out her hand.

"Come away: he does not wish it to be seen; not yet."

I did not take her hand.

"He is your only law!" I said, and stopped; for how could I say to her all that consumed my heart?

She looked at me in surprise.

"I do not know that any one else even lives," she said, simply.

It was quite true, no doubt.

A great love is an absolute isolation, and an absolute absorption. Nothing lives or moves or breathes save one life; for one life alone the sun rises and sets, the seasons revolve, the clouds bear rain, and the stars ride on high; the multitudes around cease to exist, or seem but ghostly shades; of all the sounds of earth there is but one voice audible; all past ages have been but the herald of one soul; all eternity can be but its heritage alone.

O children of the world, what know you of such love? no more than the blind worm creeping to its fellow knows of the morning glory of the day.