CONCLUSION

There comes to the author, from many readers of the foregoing pages, a
demand for further elucidations respecting the mysteries of the story.

He reluctantly avails himself of the opportunity afforded by a new
edition, to explain such incidents and passages as may have been left
too much in the dark; reluctantly, he repeats, because the necessity
makes him sensible that he can have succeeded but imperfectly, at best,
in throwing about this Romance the kind of atmosphere essential to the
effect at which he aimed.

He designed the story and the characters to bear, of course, a certain
relation to human nature and human life, but still to be so artfully and
airily removed from our mundane sphere, that some laws and proprieties
of their own should be implicitly and insensibly acknowledged.

The idea of the modern Faun, for example, loses all the poetry and
beauty which the Author fancied in it, and becomes nothing better than a
grotesque absurdity, if we bring it into the actual light of day. He
had hoped to mystify this anomalous creature between the Real and
the Fantastic, in such a manner that the reader's sympathies might be
excited to a certain pleasurable degree, without impelling him to ask
how Cuvier would have classified poor Donatello, or to insist upon being
told, in so many words, whether he had furry ears or no. As respects all
who ask such questions, the book is, to that extent, a failure.

Nevertheless, the Author fortunately has it in his power to throw light
upon several matters in which some of his readers appear to feel an
interest. To confess the truth, he was himself troubled with a curiosity
similar to that which he has just deprecated on the part of his readers,
and once took occasion to cross-examine his friends, Hilda and the
sculptor, and to pry into several dark recesses of the story, with which
they had heretofore imperfectly acquainted him.

We three had climbed to the top of St. Peter's, and were looking down
upon the Rome we were soon to leave, but which (having already sinned
sufficiently in that way) it is not my purpose further to describe. It
occurred to me, that, being so remote in the upper air, my friends might
safely utter here the secrets which it would be perilous even to whisper
on lower earth.

"Hilda," I began, "can you tell me the contents of that mysterious
packet which Miriam entrusted to your charge, and which was addressed to
Signore Luca Barboni, a