“L’ altra vedete
ch’ha fatto alla guancia
Della sua palma, sospirando,
letto.”
—Purgatorio,
vii.
When George the Fourth was still reigning over the
privacies of Windsor, when the Duke of Wellington
was Prime Minister, and Mr. Vincy was mayor of the
old corporation in Middlemarch, Mrs. Casaubon, born
Dorothea Brooke, had taken her wedding journey to Rome.
In those days the world in general was more ignorant
of good and evil by forty years than it is at present.
Travellers did not often carry full information on
Christian art either in their heads or their pockets;
and even the most brilliant English critic of the day
mistook the flower-flushed tomb of the ascended Virgin
for an ornamental vase due to the painter’s
fancy. Romanticism, which has helped to fill
some dull blanks with love and knowledge, had not yet
penetrated the times with its leaven and entered into
everybody’s food; it was fermenting still as
a distinguishable vigorous enthusiasm in certain long-haired
German artists at Rome, and the youth of other nations
who worked or idled near them were sometimes caught
in the spreading movement.
One fine morning a young man whose hair was not immoderately
long, but abundant and curly, and who was otherwise
English in his equipment, had just turned his back
on the Belvedere Torso in the Vatican and was looking
out on the magnificent view of the mountains from
the adjoining round vestibule. He was sufficiently
absorbed not to notice the approach of a dark-eyed,
animated German who came up to him and placing a hand
on his shoulder, said with a strong accent, “Come
here, quick! else she will have changed her pose.”
Quickness was ready at the call, and the two figures
passed lightly along by the Meleager, towards the
hall where the reclining Ariadne, then called the
Cleopatra, lies in the marble voluptuousness of her
beauty, the drapery folding around her with a petal-like
ease and tenderness. They were just in time to
see another figure standing against a pedestal near
the reclining marble: a breathing blooming girl,
whose form, not shamed by the Ariadne, was clad in
Quakerish gray drapery; her long cloak, fastened at
the neck, was thrown backward from her arms, and one
beautiful ungloved hand pillowed her cheek, pushing
somewhat backward the white beaver bonnet which made
a sort of halo to her face around the simply braided
dark-brown hair. She was not looking at the
sculpture, probably not thinking of it: her large
eyes were fixed dreamily on a streak of sunlight which
fell across the floor. But she became conscious
of the two strangers who suddenly paused as if to
contemplate the Cleopatra, and, without looking at
them, immediately turned away to join a maid-servant
and courier who were loitering along the hall at a
little distance off.
