At this moment there came suddenly along up the Via Sacra a tall man, deeply enveloped in his mantle, who drew near to the fountain; without looking round threw down his hat, and held a coal-black, curly, almost perpendicular hindhead under the stream of water. But hardly had he, turning upward, caught a glimpse of the profile of Albano absorbed in his fancies, when he started up all dripping, stared at the Count, fell into amazement, threw his arms high into the air, and said, "Amico?" Albano looked at him. The stranger said, "Albano!" "My Dian!" cried Albano. They clasped each other passionately, and wept for love.
Dian could not comprehend it at all. He said, in Italian, "But it surely cannot be you; you look old." He thought he was speaking German all the time, till he heard Albano answer in Italian. Both gave and got only questions. Albano found the Architect merely browner, but there was the lightning of the eyes and every faculty in its old glory. With three words he described to him the journey and the company. "How does Rome strike you?" asked Dian, pleasantly. "As life does," replied Albano, very seriously; "it makes one too tender and too hard. I recognize here absolutely nothing at all," he continued; "do those columns belong to the magnificent Temple of Peace?" "No," said Dian, "to the Temple of Concord; of the other there stands yonder nothing but the vault." "Where is Saturn's Temple?" asked Albano. "Buried in St. Adrian's Church," said Dian, and added, hastily, "close by stand the ten columns of Antonine's Temple; over beyond there, the Baths of Titus; behind us, the Palatine Hill, and so on. Now tell me—"
They walked up and down the Forum, between the arches of Titus and Severus. Albano—especially beside the teacher who in the days of childhood had so often conducted him hitherward—was yet full of the stream which had swept over the world, and the all-covering water sank but slowly. He went on to say, "To-day, when he beheld the obelisk, the soft, tender brightness of the moon had seemed to him eminently unbecoming the giant city; he would rather have seen a sun blazing on its broad banner; but now the moon was the proper funeral torch beside the dead Alexander, who at a touch collapses into a handful of dust." "The artist does not get far with feelings of this kind," said Dian; "he must look upon everlasting beauties on the right hand and on the left." "Where," Albano went on asking, "is the old Lake of Curtius, the Rostrum, the pila Horatia, the Temple of Vesta, of Venus, and of all those solitary columns?" "And where is the marble Forum itself?" said Dian; "it lies thirty span deep under our feet." "Where is the great, free people, the senate of kings, the voice of the orators, the procession to the Capitol? Buried under the mountain of potshards. O Dian, how can a man, who loses a father, a beloved in Rome, shed a single tear, or look round him with consternation, when he comes out here before this battle-field of time, and looks into the charnel-house of the nations? Dian, one would wish here an iron heart, for fate has an iron hand!"
Dian, who nowhere stayed more reluctantly than upon such tragic cliffs, hanging over, as it were, into the sea of eternity, always leaped off from them with a jest. Like the Greeks, he blended dances with tragedy. "Many a thing is conserved here, friend," said he; "in Adrian's church yonder they will still show you the bones of the three men that walked in the fire." "That is just the frightful play of destiny," replied Albano, "to occupy the heights of the mighty ancients with monks shorn down into slaves."
"The stream of time drives new wheels," said Dian; "yonder lies Raphael twice buried.[[77]] How are Chariton and the children doing?" "They are blooming on," said Albano, but in a sombre tone. "Heavens!" cried Dian, with all a father's terror, "is it really so?"[[78]] "Verily, Dian!" said Albano, softly. "Does Liana," said Dian, "still come often to Chariton's? And how fares the sweet one?" Albano answered, in a low tone, "She is dead." "What! dead? Impossible! Froulay's daughter, Albano? The gold-rose? O speak!" he cried. Albano nodded affirmatively. "Ah! thou good maiden!" said he, piteously, with tears in his black eyes, "so friendly, so enchantingly lovely, so fine an artist! But how did it come to pass? Have you, then, not been acquainted at all with the lovely child?" "One spring only," said Albano, hurriedly. "My good Dian, I will now go back to my father, and I can answer no more questions." "O certainly! But I must learn more," Dian concluded. And so they climbed silently and speedily over rubbish and torsos of columns, and neither gave heed to the mighty emotion of the other.
[TWENTY-SEVENTH JUBILEE.]
St. Peter's.—Rotunda.—Colosseum.—Letter to Schoppe.—The War.—Gaspard.—The Corsican.—Entanglement with the Princess.—Sickness.—Gaspard's Brother.—St. Peter's Dome, and Departure.
104. CYCLE.
Rome, like the creation, is an entire wonder, which gradually dismembers itself into new wonders, the Colosseum, the Pantheon, St. Peter's Church, Raphael, &c.