ue of Pope Julius; and there was the majestic
figure stretching out the hand of benediction over them, and bending
down upon this guilty and repentant pair its visage of grand benignity.
There is a singular effect oftentimes when, out of the midst of
engrossing thought and deep absorption, we suddenly look up, and catch a
glimpse of external objects. We seem at such moments to look farther and
deeper into them, than by any premeditated observation; it is as if they
met our eyes alive, and with all their hidden meaning on the surface,
but grew again inanimate and inscrutable the instant that they became
aware of our glances. So now, at that unexpected glimpse, Miriam,
Donatello, and the sculptor, all three imagined that they beheld the
bronze pontiff endowed with spiritual life. A blessing was felt
descending upon them from his outstretched hand; he approved by look and
gesture the pledge of a deep union that had passed under his auspices.

CHAPTER XXXVI

HILDA'S TOWER

When we have once known Rome, and left her where she lies, like a
long-decaying corpse, retaining a trace of the noble shape it was, but
with accumulated dust and a fungous growth overspreading all its more
admirable features, left her in utter weariness, no doubt, of her
narrow, crooked, intricate streets, so uncomfortably paved with little
squares of lava that to tread over them is a penitential pilgrimage, so
indescribably ugly, moreover, so cold, so alley-like, into which the sun
never falls, and where a chill wind forces its deadly breath into our
lungs,--left her, tired of the sight of those immense seven-storied,
yellow-washed hovels, or call them palaces, where all that is dreary
in domestic life seems magnified and multiplied, and weary of climbing
those staircases, which ascend from a ground-floor of cook shops,
cobblers' stalls, stables, and regiments of cavalry, to a middle region
of princes, cardinals, and ambassadors, and an upper tier of artists,
just beneath the unattainable sky,--left her, worn out with shivering
at the cheerless and smoky fireside by day, and feasting with our own
substance the ravenous little populace of a Roman bed at night,--left
her, sick at heart of Italian trickery, which has uprooted whatever
faith in man's integrity had endured till now, and sick at stomach
of sour bread, sour wine, rancid butter, and bad cookery, needlessly
bestowed on evil meats,--left her, disgusted with the pretence of
holiness