CHAPTER 5.
ANTONINA.
Who that has been at Rome does not remember with delight theattractions of the Pincian Hill? Who, after toiling through thewonders of the dark, melancholy city, has not been revived by a visitto its shady walks, and by breathing its fragrant breezes? Amid thesolemn mournfulness that reigns over declining Rome, this delightfulelevation rises light, airy, and inviting, at once a refreshment to thebody and a solace to the spirit. From its smooth summit the city isseen in its utmost majesty, and the surrounding country in itsbrightest aspect. The crimes and miseries of Rome seem deterred fromapproaching its favoured soil; it impresses the mind as a place setapart by common consent for the presence of the innocent and thejoyful--as a scene that rest and recreation keep sacred from theintrusion of tumult and toil.
Its appearance in modern days is the picture of its character for agespast. Successive wars might dull its beauties for a time, but peaceinvariably restored them in all their pristine loveliness. The oldRomans called it 'The Mount of Gardens'. Throughout the disasters ofthe Empire and the convulsions of the Middle Ages, it continued tomerit its ancient appellation, and a 'Mount of Gardens' it stilltriumphantly remains to the present day.
At the commencement of the fifth century the magnificence of thePincian Hill was at its zenith. Were it consistent with the conduct ofour story to dwell upon the glories of its palaces and its groves, itstemples and its theatres, such a glowing prospect of artificialsplendour, aided by natural beauty, might be spread before the readeras would tax his credulity, while it excited his astonishment. Thistask, however, it is here unnecessary to attempt. It is not for thewonders of ancient luxury and taste, but for the abode of the zealousand religious Numerian, that we find it now requisite to arouseinterest and engage attention.
At the back of the Flaminian extremity of the Pincian Hill, andimmediately overlooking the city wall, stood, at the period of which wewrite, a small but elegantly built house, surrounded by a little gardenof its own, and protected at the back by the lofty groves andoutbuildings of the palace of Vetranio the senator. This abode hadbeen at one time a sort of summer-house belonging to the formerproprietor of a neighbouring mansion.
Profligate necessities, however, had obliged the owner to part withthis portion of his possessions, which was purchased by a merchant wellknown to Numerian, who received it as a legacy at his friend's death.Disgusted, as soon as his reforming projects took possession of hismind, at the bare idea of propinquity to the ennobled libertines ofRome, the austere Christian determined to abandon his inheritance, andto sell it to another; but, at the repeated entreaties of his daughter,he at length consented to change his purpose, and sacrifice hisantipathy to his luxurious neighbours to his child's youthfulattachment to the beauties of Nature as displayed in his legacy on thePincian Mount. In this instance only did the natural affection of thefather prevail over the acquired severity of the reformer. Here hecondescended, for the first and the last time, to the sweettrivialities of youth. Here, indulgent in spite of himself, he fixedhis little household, and permitted to his daughter her solerecreations of tending the flowers in the garden and luxuriating in theloveliness of the distant view.
* * * * *
The night has advanced an hour since the occurrence mentioned in thepreceding chapter. The clear and brilliant moonlight of Italy nowpervades every district of the glorious city, and bathes in its pureeffulgence the groves and palaces on the Pincian Mount. From thegarden of Numerian the irregular buildings of the great suburbs ofRome, the rich undulating country beyond, and the long ranges ofmountains in the distance, are now all visible in the soft andluxurious light. Near the spot which commands this view, not a livingcreature is to be seen on a first examination; but on a moreindustrious and patient observation, you are subsequently able todetect at one of the windows of Numerian's house, half hidden by acurtain, the figure of a young girl.
Soon this solitary form approaches nearer to the eye. The moonbeams,that have hitherto shone only upon the window, now illuminate otherobjects. First they display a small, white arm; then a light, simplerobe; then a fair, graceful neck; and finally a bright, youthful,innocent face, directed steadfastly towards the wide moon-brightenedprospect of the distant mountains.
For some time the girl remains in contemplation at her window. Thenshe leaves her post, and almost immediately reappears at a door leadinginto the garden. Her figure, as she advances towards the lawn beforeher, is light and small--a natural grace and propriety appear in hermovements--she holds pressed to her bosom and half concealed by herrobe, a gilt lute. When she reaches a turf bank commanding the sameview as the window, she arranges her instrument upon her knees, andwith something of restraint in her manner gently touches the chords.Then, as if alarmed at the sound she has produced, she glancesanxiously around her, apparently fearful of being overheard. Herlarge, dark, lustrous eyes have in them an expression of apprehension;her delicate lips are half parted; a sudden flush rises in her soft,olive complexion as she examines every corner of the garden. Havingcompleted her survey without discovering any cause for the suspicionsshe seems to entertain, she again employs herself over her instrument.Once more she strikes the chords, and now with a bolder hand. Thenotes she produces resolve themselves into a wild, plaintive, irregularmelody, alternately rising and sinking, as if swayed by the fickleinfluence of a summer wind. These sounds are soon harmoniouslyaugmented by the young minstrel's voice, which is calm, still, andmellow, and adapts itself with exquisite ingenuity to every arbitraryvariation in the tone of the accompaniment. The song that she haschosen is one of the fanciful odes of the day. Its chief merit to herlies in its alliance to the strange Eastern air which she heard at herfirst interview with the senator who presented her with the lute.Paraphrased in English, the words of the composition would run thus:--
THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC
I.
Spirit, whose dominion reigns Over Music's thrilling strains, Whence may be thy distant birth? Say what tempted thee to earth?
Mortal, listen: I was born In Creation's early years, Singing, 'mid the stars of morn, To the music of the spheres.
Once as, within the realms of space, I view'd this mortal planet roll, A yearning towards they hapless race, Unbidden, filled my seraph soul!
Angels, who had watched my birth, Heard me sigh to sing to earth; 'Twas transgression ne'er forgiv'n To forget my native Heav'n; So they sternly bade me go-- Banish'd to the world below.
II.
Exil'd here, I knew no fears; For, though darkness round me clung, Though none heard me in the spheres, Earth had listeners while I sung.
Young spirits of the Spring sweet breeze Came thronging round me, soft and coy, Light wood-nymphs sported in the trees, And laughing Echo leapt for joy!
Brooding Woe and writhing Pain Soften'd at my gentle strain; Bounding Joy, with footstep fleet, Ran to nestle at my feet; While, aroused, delighted Love Softly kiss'd me from above!
III.
Since those years of early time, Faithful still to earth I've sung; Flying through each distant clime, Ever welcome, ever young!
Still pleas'd, my solace I impart Where brightest hopes are scattered dead; 'Tis mine--sweet gift!--to charm the heart, Though all its other joys have fled!
Time, that withers all beside, Harmless past me loves to glide; Change, that mortals must obey, Ne'er shall shake my gentle sway; Still 'tis mine all hearts to move In eternity of love.
As the last sounds of her voice and her lute died softly away upon thestill night air, an indescribable elevation appeared in the girl'scountenance. She looked up rapturously into the far, star-bright sky;her lip quivered, her dark eyes filled with tears, and her bosom heavedwith the excess of the emotions that the music and the scene inspired.Then she gazed slowly around her, dwelling tenderly upon the fragrantflowe
r-beds that were the work of her own hands, and looking forth withan expression half reverential, half ecstatic over the long, smooth,shining plains, and the still, glorious mountains, that had so longbeen the inspiration of her most cherished thoughts, and that nowglowed before her eyes, soft and beautiful as her dreams on her virgincouch. Then, overpowered by the artless thoughts and innocentrecollections which on the magic wings of Nature and Night came waftedover her mind, she bent down her head upon her lute, pressed her round,dimpled cheek against its smooth frame, and drawing her fingersmechanically over its strings, abandoned herself unreservedly to thereveries of maidenhood and youth.
Such was the being devoted by her father's fatal ambition to a lifelongbanishment from all that is attractive in human art and beautiful inhuman intellect! Such was the daughter whose existence was to be onelong acquaintance with mortal woe, one unvaried refusal of mortalpleasure, whose thoughts were to be only of sermons and fasts, whoseaction were to be confined to the binding up of strangers' wounds andthe drying of strangers' tears; whose life, in brief, was doomed to bethe embodiment of her father's austere ideal of the austere virgins ofthe ancient Church!
Deprived of her mother, exiled from the companionship of others of herage, permitted no familiarity with any living being, no sympathies withany other heart, commanded but never indulged, rebuked but neverapplauded, she must have sunk beneath the severities imposed on her byher father, but for the venial disobedience committed in the pursuit ofthe solitary pleasure procured for her by her lute. Vainly, in herhours of study, did she read the fierce anathemas against love,liberty, and pleasure, poetry, painting, and music, gold, silver, andprecious stones, which the ancient fathers had composed for the benefitof the submissive congregations of former days; vainly did she imagine,during those long hours of theological instruction, that her heart'sforbidden longings were banished and destroyed--that her patient andchildlike disposition was bowed in complete subserviency to the mostrigorous of her father's commands. No sooner were her interviews withNumerian concluded than the promptings of that nature within us, whichartifice may warp but can never destroy, lured her into a forgetfulnessof all that she had heard and a longing for much that was forbidden.We live, in this existence, but by the companionship of some sympathy,aspiration, or pursuit, which serves us as our habitual refuge from thetribulations we inherit from the outer world. The same feeling whichled Antonina in her childhood to beg for a flower-garden, in hergirlhood induced her to gain possession of a lute.
The passion for music which prompted her visit to Vetranio, which alonesaved her affections from pining in the solitude imposed on them, andwhich occupied her leisure hours in the manner we have alreadydescribed, was an inheritance of her birth.
Her Spanish mother had sung to her, hour after hour, in her cradle, forthe short time during which she was permitted to watch over her child.The impression thus made on the dawning faculties of the infant,nothing ever effaced. Though her earliest perception were greeted onlyby the sight of her father's misery; though the form which hisdespairing penitence soon assumed doomed her to a life of seclusion andan education of admonition, the passionate attachment to the melody ofsound, inspired by her mother's voice--almost imbibed at her mother'sbreast--lived through all neglect, and survived all opposition. Itfound its nourishment in childish recollections, in snatches of streetminstrelsy heard through her window, in the passage of the night windsof winter through the groves on the Pincian Mount, and received itsrapturous gratification in the first audible sounds from the Romansenator's lute. How her possession of an instrument, and her skill inplaying, were subsequently gained, the reader already knows fromVetranio's narrative at Ravenna. Could the frivolous senator havediscovered the real intensity of the emotions his art was raising inhis pupil's bosom while he taught her; could he have imagined howincessantly, during their lessons, her sense of duty struggled with herlove for music--how completely she was absorbed, one moment by an agonyof doubt and fear, another by an ecstasy of enjoyment and hope--hewould have felt little of that astonishment at her coldness towardshimself which he so warmly expressed at his interview with Julia in thegardens of the Court. In truth, nothing could be more complete thanAntonina's childish unconsciousness of the feelings with which Vetranioregarded her. In entering his presence, whatever remnant of heraffections remained unwithered by her fears was solely attracted andengrossed by the beloved and beautiful lute. In receiving theinstrument, she almost forgot the giver in the triumph of possession;or, if she thought of him at all, it was to be grateful for havingescaped uninjured from a member of that class, for whom her father'sreiterated admonitions had inspired her with a vague feeling of dreadand distrust, and to determine that, now she had acknowledged hiskindness and departed from his domains, nothing should ever induce herto risk discovery by her father and peril to herself by ever enteringthem again.
Innocent in her isolation, almost infantine in her natural simplicity,a single enjoyment was sufficient to satisfy all the passions of herage. Father, mother, lover, and companion; liberties, amusements, andadornments--they were all summed up for her in that simple lute. Thearchness, the liveliness, and the gentleness of her disposition; thepoetry of her nature, and the affection of her heart; the happy bloomof youth, which seclusion could not all wither nor distorted precepttaint, were now entirely nourished, expanded, and freshened--such isthe creative power of human emotion--by that inestimable possession.She could speak to it, smile on it, caress it, and believe, in theecstasy of her delight, in the carelessness of her self-delusion, thatit sympathised with her joy. During her long solitudes, when she wassilently watched in her father's absence by the brooding, melancholystranger whom he had set over her, it became a companion dearer thanthe flower-garden, dearer even that the plains and mountains whichformed her favourite view. When her father returned, and she was ledforth to sit in a dark place among strange, silent people, and tolisten to interminable declamations, it was a solace to think of theinstrument as it lay hidden securely in her chamber, and to ponderdelightedly on what new music of her own she could play upon it next.And then, when evening arrived, and she was left alone in hergarden--then came the hour of moonlight and song; the moment of raptureand melody that drew her out of herself, elevated her she felt not how,and transported her she knew not whither.
But, while we thus linger over reflection on motives and examinationsinto character, we are called back to the outer world of passinginterests and events by the appearances of another figure on the scene.We left Antonina in the garden thinking over her lute. She stillremains in her meditative position, but she is now no longer alone.
From the same steps by which she had descended, a man now advances intothe garden, and walks towards the place she occupies. His gait islimping, his stature crooked, his proportions distorted. His large,angular features stand out in gaunt contrast to his shrivelled cheeks.His dry, matted hair has been burnt by the sun into a strange tawnybrown. His expression is one of fixed, stern, mournful thought. As hesteps stealthily along, advancing towards Antonina, he mutters tohimself, and clutches mechanically at his garments with his lank,shapeless fingers. The radiant moonlight, falling fully upon hiscountenance, invests it with a livid, mysterious, spectral appearance:seen by a stranger at the present moment, he would have been almostawful to look upon.
This was the man who had intercepted Vetranio on his journey home, andwho had now hurried back so as to regain his accustomed post before hismaster's return, for he was the same individual mentioned by Numerianas his aged convert, Ulpius, in his interview with the landholder atthe Basilica of St. Peter.
When Ulpius had arrived within a few paces of the girl he stopped,saying in a hoarse, thick voice--
'Hide your toy--Numerian is at the gates!'
Antonina started violently as she listened to those repulsive accents.The blood rushed into her cheeks; she hastily covered the lute with herrobe; paused an instant, as if intending to speak to the man, thenshuddered violently, and hur
ried towards the house.
As she mounted the steps Numerian met her in the hall. There was nowno chance of hiding the lute in its accustomed place.
'You stay too late in the garden,' said the father, looking proudly, inspite of all his austerity, upon his beautiful daughter as she stood byhis side. 'But what affects you?' he added, noticing her confusion.'You tremble; your colour comes and goes; your lips quiver. Give meyour hand!'
As Antonina obeyed him, a fold of the treacherous robe slipped aside,and discovered a part of the frame of the lute. Numerian's quick eyediscovered it immediately. He snatched the instrument from her feeblegrasp. His astonishment on beholding it was too great for words, andfor an instant he confronted the poor girl, whose pale face lookedrigid with terror, in ominous and expressive silence.
'This thing,' said he at length, 'this invention of libertines in myhouse--in my daughter's possession!' and he dashed the lute intofragments on the floor.
For one moment Antonina looked incredulously on the ruins of thebeloved companion, which was the centre of all her happiestexpectations for future days. Then, as she began to estimate thereality of her deprivation, her eyes lost all their heaven-bornbrightness, and filled to overflowing with the tears of earth.
'To your chamber!' thundered Numerian, as she knelt, sobbingconvulsively, over those hapless fragments. 'To your chamber!Tomorrow shall bring this mystery of iniquity to light!'
She rose humbly to obey him, for indignation had no part in theemotions that shook her gentle and affectionate nature. As she movedtowards the room that no lute was henceforth to occupy, as she thoughton the morrow that no lute was henceforth to enliven, her grief almostoverpowered her. She turned back and looked imploringly at her father,as if entreating permission to pick up even the smallest of thefragments at his feet.
'To your chamber!' he reiterated sternly. 'Am I to be disobeyed to myface?'
Without any repetition of her silent remonstrance, she instantlyretired. As soon as she was out of sight, Ulpius ascended the stepsand stood before the angered father.
'Look, Ulpius,' cried Numerian, 'my daughter, whom I have so carefullycherished, whom I intended for an example to the world, has deceivedme, even thus!'
He pointed, as he spoke, to the ruins of the unfortunate lute; butUlpius did not address to him a word in reply, and he hastilycontinued:--
'I will not sully the solemn offices of tonight by interrupting themwith my worldly affairs. To-morrow I will interrogate my disobedientchild. In the meantime, do not imagine, Ulpius, that I connect you inany way with this wicked and unworthy deception! In you I have everyconfidence, in your faithfulness I have every hope.'
Again he paused, and again Ulpius kept silence. Any one less agitated,less confiding, than his unsuspicious master, would have remarked thata faint sinister smile was breaking forth upon his haggard countenance.But Numerian's indignation was still too violent to permit him toobserved, and, spite of his efforts to control himself, he again brokeforth in complaint.
'On this night too, of all others,' cried he, 'when I had hoped to leadher among my little assembly of the faithful, to join in their prayers,and to listen to my exhortations--on this night I am doomed to find hera player on a pagan lute, a possessor of the most wanton of the world'svanities! God give me patience to worship this night with unwanderingthoughts, for my heart is vexed at the transgression of my child, asthe heart of Eli of old at the iniquities of his sons!'
He was moving rapidly away, when, as if struck with a suddenrecollection, he stopped abruptly, and again addressed his gloomycompanion.
'I will go by myself to the chapel to-night,' said he. 'You, Ulpius,will stay to keep watch over my disobedient child. Be vigilant, goodfriend, over my house; for even now, on my return, I thought that twostrangers were following my steps, and I forebode some evil in storefor me as the chastisement for my sins, even greater than this miseryof my daughter's transgression. Be watchful, good Ulpius--be watchful!'
And, as he hurried away, the stern, serious man felt as overwhelmed atthe outrage that had been offered to his gloomy fanaticism, as theweak, timid girl at the destruction that had been wreaked upon herharmless lute.
After Numerian had departed, the sinister smile again appeared on thecountenance of Ulpius. He stood for a short time fixed in thought, andthen began slowly to descend a staircase near him which led to somesubterranean apartments. He had not gone far when a slight noisebecame audible at an extremity of the corridor above. As he listenedfor a repetition of the sound, he heard a sob, and looking cautiouslyup, discovered, by the moonlight, Antonina stepping cautiously alongthe marble pavement of the hall.
She held in her hand a little lamp; her small, rosy feet wereuncovered; the tears still streamed over her cheeks. She advanced withthe greatest caution (as if fearful of being overheard) until shegained the part of the floor still strewn with the ruins of the brokenlute. Here she knelt down, and pressed each fragment that lay beforeher separately to her lips. Then hurriedly concealing a single piecein her bosom, she arose and stole quickly away in the direction bywhich she had come.
'Be patient till the dawn,' muttered her faithless guardian, gazingafter her from his concealment as she disappeared; 'it will bring tothy lute a restorer, and to Ulpius an ally!'