XI.
A MENAGERIE IN STONE.
In Rome there is always something to stir the fancy and quicken the pulse—always something to recall to the Present the magnificent Past. Now it is a column or statue, now a ruined palace, and now the vast fabric of an amphitheater. But the ruins are weighted with such tragic memories of by-gone Cæsars—their wars, their triumphs, their funeral pomp—as to be almost oppressively solemn. Let us then leave them for once, and go where the Past will suggest itself in some simpler, happier fashion—let us visit a Roman “Zoo.”
No day could be better for the purpose than this sunny one; for the Zoo has its home in the Vatican, and we need all the sunshine we can get to counteract its chill. Besides, no matter with how definite a purpose we set out, once within that marble world we are sure to linger—so many are the objects that claim the eye. It is only after a lingering stroll that we at last reach the Sala degli Animali, or Hall of the Animals.
An odd world it is, suggesting the pictures of Paradise before the dispersion of species; a world that includes creatures wild and tame, familiar and suppositious—birds, harpies, dragons, reptiles, quadrupeds, Minotaur, insects and fish. Three patrons of the chase preside, Diana and Hercules at one end of the hall, the imperial hunter Commodus at the other.
SCULPTURE OF GREYHOUNDS IN THE VATICAN.
The longer we gaze the stronger grows our feeling that it is in truth a menagerie, surviving somehow from early days. Only, how very silent! The last party of tourists has passed on, we are quite alone, save for these many shapes all around us—and it is hardly in nature that no faintest sound or movement should be heard. Those graceful greyhound puppies play with each other in perfect silence; not a footfall nor crackling twig betrays the flight of yonder deer.
And so, gradually, it dawns on us that although this is life, it is life long turned to stone. Some Arabian Nights’ enchantment has been at work, arresting these varied forms in their prime of activity; and, doubtless, on some future day, at the true wizard’s touch, they will turn back again from marble into breathing flesh. But that will not happen to-day, nor yet to-morrow, so we may as well take advantage of the stillness to see what the menagerie contains.