CHAPTER XXIX.

NEXT day I got such changes in my papers as were needful for the journey, and I took her on her homeward way. She did not resist. She was not in any way sensible of where she went, and she was docile, like a gentle animal stunned with many blows. Her bodily health did not seem weak, though she was very feverish, and her pulses stopped at times in a strange way.

The woman who had been with her wept at parting from her.

"Will she find him there?" she asked.

"Nay, never there, nor anywhere," I said; for who finds love afresh that once has been forsaken?

She had had the clue and the sword, and she had given them up to him, and he in return had given her shipwreck and death. It was so two thousand years ago, and it is so to-day, and will be so to-morrow.

From my carefully-hoarded money I paid that woman well, for she had been true and tender: the rest I spent in going back to Rome. The boy came with me. I was hard and cruel to him at that time, but I could not say him nay.

Throughout the journey she did not change in any way. The noise and movement and many changes seemed to perplex and trouble her vaguely, as they trouble a poor lamb sent on that iron road, but no more. She never spoke, except that now and then she would look wistfully out at some gleam of sky or water or spreading plain, and ask, "Will he be long?" Neither of me nor of Amphion had she the slightest consciousness. It was the madness of one all-absorbent and absorbed idea: indeed, what else is Love?

Even the beautiful snow-ranges and the serene glory of the mountains, from which I had hoped something, failed to alter her or rouse her. I think she did not know them from the clouds, or see them even. No doubt all she ever saw in daylight or in darkness was one face alone.

It seemed to me as if that journey would never end; to me it was like a horrible, distorted dream, a nightmare in which an appalling horror leaned forever on my heart; all the splendors of early winter, of virgin snows, of clear blue ice, of falling avalanche and glacier spread upon the mountain-side, and underneath in the deep valleys the splendor still of russet gold, and of the gorgeous purples and rubies mantling decay, all these, I say, only served to heighten the ghostliness of that long passage through the slow short days back to my country.

For despair went with me.

But, tardy and terrible though it was, it drew on towards its end before many suns had risen and set.

It is so beautiful, that highway to our Rome across the land from Etrurian Arezzo; the Umbrian soil is rich and fresh, masses of oak clothe the hills, avenues of oak and beech and clumps of forest-trees shelter the cattle and break the lines of olive and of vine; behind are the mountains, dusky against the light, with floating vapors veiling them, and half hiding some ruined fortress or walled village, or some pile, half palace and half prison, set high upon their ridges; and ever and again, upon some spur of them or eminence, some old gray city, mighty in the past, and still in fame immortal; Cortona, with its citadel like a towering rock, enthroned aloft; Assisi, sacred and gray upon the high hill-top; Spoleto, lovely in her ancientness as any dream, with calm deep woods around, and at her back the purple cloud-swept heights that bear its name; Perugia Augusta, with domes and towers, cupolas and castles, endless as a forest of stone; Foligno, grand and gaunt, and still and desolate, as all these cities are, their strength spent, their fortresses useless, their errand done, their genius of war and art quenched with their beacon-fires; one by one they succeed one another in the long panorama of the Apennine range, wood and water, and corn and orchard, all beneath them and around them, fruitful and in peace, and in their midst, lone Thrasymene, soundless and windless, with the silvery birds at rest upon its silvery waters, and here and there to be | | 300 seen a solitary sail, catching, the light and shining like a silver shield amidst the reedy shallows.

Then, after Thrasymene come the wild, bold gorges of the Sabine mountains; wooded scarps, bold headlands, great breadths of stunted brushwood, with brooks that tumble through it; rocks that glow in the sun with the deep colors of all the marbles that earth makes; deep ravines, in which the new-born Tiber runs at will; and above these the broad blue sky, and late in the day the burning gold of a stormy sunset shining out of pearly mists that wreath the lower hills; then the wide level green plains, misty and full of shadows in the twilight, white villages hung aloft on mountain edges like the nests of eagles ; then a pause in the green fields, where once the buried vestals were left alone in the bowels of the earth, with the single loaf and the pitcher of water, to face the endless night of eternity; then "Roma," says some voice, as quietly as though the mother of mankind were only a wayside hamlet where the mules should stop and drink.

Ay, there is no highway like it, wander the world as you will, and none that keeps such memories.

But for me, I saw no loveliness then of city or of citadel hoary with years, of monastery sheltered amidst snows and forest, of silent lake sleeping in the serenest folds of the hills. I only strained my ear, with the eager hearkening of any spent and hunted animal, to hear .the name of Rome.

At last I heard it, when the night had fallen, though the moon was not as yet up over the edge of the eastern horizon.

The great bells were booming heavily; some cardinal had died.

Gently, and without haste, I led her by the hand through the old familiar ways, shrouded in shadows under the cold starless skes [sic] .

My heart almost ceased to beat. Here was my last hope. If this had no spell to rouse her, she would sleep in the dreams of madness forever; none would ever awaken her. She had loved the stones and the soil of Rome with a filial devotion: Rome alone would perchance have power to save her.

I walked on and led her by the hand. Her fingers moved a little in my hold as we passed through the Forum, and past the basilica of Constantine, as though some thrill ran through her. But I looked in her face, and there was no change: it | | 301 was still as stone, and the eyes were burning and had a sightless look.

I went onward by way of the Capitol, past the Ara Cœli and the colossal figures of the Dioscuri. Once she paused, and a sort of tremor shook her, and for an instant I hoped for some passing remembrance, ever so slight, that yet should come to link her once more with the living world.

But none came; her eyes never altered; she went with me obediently, passively, as she would have gone with any stranger who had led her so, past the great stairs, and the divine Brethren, who once had been to her not any whit less sacred than had been Rome itself.

We went down into the grim gray ruinous streets that pass under the Tarpeian Rock, with the lichen and the wild shrubs growing on mounds of brick that once were temples, and the poor crowding together in dusky hovels that once were the arched passages of palaces or the open courts of public pleasure-places.

There was little light; here and there a lantern swung upon a cord, or the glow from a smith's forge shone ruddy on the stones. She did not notice anything; she came onward with me, walking straightly, as the blind do. Thence from the darkness and the squalor and the ruin we came out by winding ways on to the river's bank by Quattro Capi.

The river was full, but not in flood; its tawny hues were brown with the soil of the mountains; on it a few boats were rocking, tied with ropes to the piles of the bridge; the island was indistinct, and the farther shore was dim, but at that instant the moon rose, and lines of silver passed across the pulsing stream, and touched to light the peristyle of the little moss-grown temple by our side, and the falling water of the Medicis' fountain.

She moved forward of her own will, and walked to the edge of the Tiber, and stood and looked on the strong swift current and the shadowy shores, and on the domes and roofs and towers and temples that were gathered like a phantom city on the edges of the shores.

She looked in silence.

Then all at once the blindness passed from her eyes: she saw and knew the sight she saw. She stretched out her arms, with a tremulous hesitation and gesture of ineffable welcome.

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"This is Rome!" she cried, with a great sigh, while her very soul seemed to go forth to the city as a child to its mother. Then she fell on her knees and wept aloud.

I knew that she was saved, and Rome had saved her.