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THE MARBLE FAUN
or The Romance of Monte Beni
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
In Two Volumes This is Volume One
Contents
THE MARBLE FAUN
| MIRIAM, HILDA, KENYON, DONATELLOTHE FAUNSUBTERRANEAN REMINISCENCESTHE SPECTRE OF THE CATACOMBMIRIAM'S STUDIOTHE VIRGIN'S SHRINEBEATRICETHE SUBURBAN VILLATHE FAUN AND NYMPHTHE SYLVAN DANCEFRAGMENTARY SENTENCESA STROLL ON THE PINCIANA SCULPTOR'S STUDIOCLEOPATRAAN AESTHETIC COMPANYA MOONLIGHT RAMBLEMIRIAM'S TROUBLEON THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICETHE FAUN'S TRANSFORMATIONTHE BURIAL CHANTTHE DEAD CAPUCHINTHE MEDICI GARDENSMIRIAM AND HILDA |
THE MARBLE FAUN
Volume I
CHAPTER I
MIRIAM, HILDA, KENYON, DONATELLO
Four individuals, in whose fortunes we should be glad to interest the reader, happened to be standing in one of the saloons of the sculpture-gallery in the Capitol at Rome. It was that room (the first, after ascending the staircase) in the centre of which reclines the noble and most pathetic figure of the Dying Gladiator, just sinking into his death-swoon. Around the walls stand the Antinous, the Amazon, the Lycian Apollo, the Juno; all famous productions of antique sculpture, and still shining in the undiminished majesty and beauty of their ideal life, although the marble that embodies them is yellow with time, and perhaps corroded by the damp earth in which they lay buried for centuries. Here, likewise, is seen a symbol (as apt at this moment as it was two thousand years ago) of the Human Soul, with its choice of Innocence or Evil close at hand, in the pretty figure of a child, clasping a dove to her bosom, but assaulted by a snake.
From one of the windows of this saloon, we may see a flight of broad stone steps, descending alongside the antique and massive foundation of the Capitol, towards the battered triumphal arch of Septimius Severus, right below. Farther on, the eye skirts along the edge of the desolate Forum (where Roman washerwomen hang out their linen to the sun), passing over a shapeless confusion of modern edifices, piled rudely up with ancient brick and stone, and over the domes of Christian churches, built on the old pavements of heathen temples, and supported by the very pillars that once upheld them. At a distance beyond—yet but a little way, considering how much history is heaped into the intervening space—rises the great sweep of the Coliseum, with the blue sky brightening through its upper tier of arches. Far off, the view is shut in by the Alban Mountains, looking just the same, amid all this decay and change, as when Romulus gazed thitherward over his half finished wall.
