and
between the granite pillars, Caryatides and Hermes, symbols of
immobility, gaze at the immutable symmetry of the verdant lawns; and the
Villa Medici--like a forest of emerald green spreading away in a fairy
tale, and the Villa Ludovici--a little wild--redolent of violets,
consecrated by the presence of that Juno adored by Goethe in the days
when the plane-trees and the cypresses, that one might well have thought
immortal, had already begun to tremble with the foreboding of sale and
death--all the patrician villas, the crowning glory of Rome, became well
acquainted with their love. The picture and sculpture galleries too--the
room in the Borghese where, before Correggio's 'Danae' Elena smiled as
at her own reflection; and the Mirror Room, where her image glided among
the Cupids of Ciro Ferri and the garlands of Mario de' Fiori; the
chamber of Heliodorus, where Raphael has succeeded in making the dull
walls throb and palpitate with life; and the apartments of the Borgias,
where the great fantasia of Penturicchio unfolds its marvellous web of
history, fable, dreams, caprices and audacities; and the Galatea Room,
through which is diffused an ineffable freshness, a perennial serenity
of light and grace; and the room where the Hermaphrodite, that gentle
monster, offspring of the loves of a nymph and a demi-god, extends his
ambiguous form amidst the sparkle of polished stone--all these
unfrequented abodes of Beauty were well acquainted with them.

They echoed fervently the sublime cry of the poet--_Eine Welt zwar bist
du, O Rom!_ Thou art a world in thyself, oh Rome! But as without love
the world would not be the world, so Rome without love would not be
Rome, and the stairway of the Trinita, glorified by the slow ascension
of the Day, became the Stairway of Felicity by the ascent of Elena the
Fair on her way to the Palazzo Zuccari.

'At times,' Elena said to him, 'my feeling for you is so delicate, so
profound, that it becomes--how shall I describe it?--maternal almost!'

Andrea laughed, for she was his senior by barely three years.

'And at times,' he rejoined, 'I feel the communion of our spirits to be
so chaste that I could call you sister while I kiss your hands.'

These fallacious ideas of purity and loftiness of sentiment were but the
reaction after more carnal delights, when the soul experiences a vague
yearning for the ideal. At such times too, the young man's aspirations
towards the art he so much loved were a