



Produced by Michael Pullen and David Widger





THE MARBLE FAUN

or The Romance of Monte Beni


By Nathaniel Hawthorne


In Two Volumes

This is Volume One




Contents

     Volume I

     I       MIRIAM, HILDA, KENYON, DONATELLO
     II      THE FAUN
     III     SUBTERRANEAN REMINISCENCES
     IV      THE SPECTRE OF THE CATACOMB
     V       MIRIAM'S STUDIO
     VI      THE VIRGIN'S SHRINE
     VII     BEATRICE
     VIII    THE SUBURBAN VILLA
     IX      THE FAUN AND NYMPH
     X       THE SYLVAN DANCE
     XI      FRAGMENTARY SENTENCES
     XII     A STROLL ON THE PINCIAN
     XIII    A SCULPTOR'S STUDIO
     XIV     CLEOPATRA
     XV      AN AESTHETIC COMPANY
     XVI     A MOONLIGHT RAMBLE
     XVII    MIRIAM'S TROUBLE
     XVIII   ON THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE
     XIX     THE FAUN'S TRANSFORMATION
     XX      THE BURIAL CHANT
     XXI     THE DEAD CAPUCHIN
     XXII    THE MEDICI GARDENS
     XXIII   MIRIAM AND HILDA


     Volume II

     XXIV    THE TOWER AMONG THE APENNINES
     XXV     SUNSHINE
     XXVI    THE PEDIGREE OF MONTE BENI
     XXVII   MYTHS
     XXVIII  THE OWL TOWER
     XXIX    ON THE BATTLEMENTS
     XXX     DONATELLO'S BUST
     XXXI    THE MARBLE SALOON
     XXXII   SCENES BY THE WAY
     XXXIII  PICTURED WINDOWS
     XXXIV   MARKET-DAY IN PERUGIA
     XXXV    THE BRONZE PONTIFF'S BENEDICTION
     XXXVI   HILDA'S TOWER
     XXXVII  THE EMPTINESS OF PICTURE GALLERIES
     XXXVIII ALTARS AND INCENSE
     XXXIX   THE WORLD'S CATHEDRAL
     XL      HILDA AND A FRIEND
     XLI     SNOWDROPS AND MAIDENLY DELIGHTS
     XLII    REMINISCENCES OF MIRIAM
     XLIII   THE EXTINCTION OF A LAMP
     XLIV    THE DESERTED SHRINE
     XLV     THE FLIGHT OF HILDA'S DOVES
     XLVI    A WALK ON THE CAMPAGNA
     XLVII   THE PEASANT AND CONTADINA
     XLVIII  A SCENE IN THE CORSO
     XLIX    A FROLIC OF THE CARNIVAL
     L       MIRIAM, HILDA, KENYON, DONATELLO




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.

We glance hastily at these things,--at this bright sky, and those
blue distant mountains, and at the ruins, Etruscan, Roman, Christian,
venerable with a threefold antiquity, and at the company of world-famous
statues in the saloon,--in the hope of putting the reader into that
state of feeling which is experienced oftenest at Rome. It is a vague
sense of ponderous remembrances; a perception of such weight and density
in a bygone life, of which this spot was the centre, that the present
moment is pressed down or crowded out, and our individual affairs and
interests are but half as real here as elsewhere. Viewed through this
medium