But it comes, and passes with the glory of St. Peter’s—lighted from top to bottom. With Enrica, I saw it from the Ripetta, as it loomed up in the distance, like a city on fire.
The next day I bring home my last bunch of flowers, and with it a little richly-chased Roman ring. No fire blazes on the hearth, but they are all there. Warm days have come, and the summer air, even now, hangs heavy with fever in the hollows of the plain.
I heard them stirring early on the morning of which I was to go away. I do not think I slept very well myself—nor very late. Never did Enrica look more beautiful—never. All her carnival robes and the sad drapery of the Friday of Crucifixion could not so adorn her beauty as that neat morning dress and that simple rosebud she wore upon her bosom. She gave it to me—the last—with a trembling hand. I did not, for I could not, thank her. She knew it; and her eyes were full.
The old man kissed my cheek—it was the Roman custom, but the custom did not extend to the Roman girls; at least not often. As I passed down the Corso I looked back at the balcony, where she stood in the time of Carnival in the brown sombrero with the white plume. I knew she would be there now; and there she was. My eyes dwelt upon the vision, very loth to leave it; and after my eyes had lost it, my heart clung to it—there, where my memory clings now.
At noon the carriage stopped upon the hills, toward Soracte, that overlooked Rome. There was a stunted pine tree grew a little way from the road, and I sat down under it—for I wished no dinner—and I looked back with strange tumult of feeling upon the sleeping city, with the gray, billowy sea of the Campagna lying around it.
I seemed to see Enrica, the Roman girl, in that morning dress, with her brown hair in its silken fillet; but the rosebud that was in her bosom was now in mine. Her silvery voice, too, seemed to float past me, bearing snatches of Roman songs; but the songs were sad and broken.
—After all, this is sad vanity! thought I; and yet if I had espied then some returning carriage going down toward Rome, I will not say—but that I should have hailed it, and taken a place, and gone back, and to this day, perhaps, have lived at Rome.
But the vetturino called me; the coach was ready; I gave one more look toward the dome that guarded the sleeping city, and then we galloped down the mountain, on the road that lay toward Perugia and Lake Thrasimene.
—Sweet Enrica! art thou living yet? Or hast thou passed away to that Silent Land where the good sleep, and the beautiful?
The visions of the past fade. The morning breeze has died upon the meadow; the Bob-o’-Lincoln sits swaying on the willow tufts—singing no longer. The trees lean to the brook; but the shadows fall straight and dense upon the silver stream.