Under the sombre vaultings of the great Florentine Cathedral, the impression was not weakened. The austere gloom of it chimed more nearly with his state of unrest. Then there are the galleries, the painted ceilings,—angels, saints, martyrs, holy families,—can art have been leashed through so many ages with a pleasant fiction? Is there not somewhere at bottom an earnest, vital truth, which men must needs cling by if they be healthful and earnest themselves? Even the meretricious adornments of the churches of Genoa afford new evidence of the way in which the heart of a people has lavished itself upon belief; and if belief, why, then, hope.
Upon the Cornice road, with Italy behind him and home before (such home as he knows), he thinks once more of those he has left. Not that he has forgotten them altogether; he has purchased a rich coral necklace in Naples, which will be the very thing for his old friend Rose; and, in Rome, the richest cameos to be found in the Via Condotti he has secured for Adèle; even for Aunt Eliza he has brought away from Florence a bit of the pietra dura, a few olive-leaves upon a black ground. Nor has he forgotten a rich piece of the Genoese velvet for Mrs. Brindlock; and, for his father, an old missal, which, he trusts, dates back far enough to save it from the odium he attaches to the present Church, and to give it an early Christian sanctity. He has counted upon seeing Mr. Maverick at Marseilles, but learns, with surprise, upon his arrival there, that this gentleman had sailed for America some months previously. The ship is making a capital freight, and the captain informs him that application has been made for the only vacant state-room in their little cabin by a lady attended by her maid. Reuben assents cheerfully to this accession of companionship; and, running off for a sight of the ruins at Nismes and Arles, returns only in time to catch the ship upon the day of its departure. As they pass out of harbor, the lady passenger, in deep black, (the face seems half familiar to him,) watches wistfully the receding shores, and, as they run abreast the chapel of Nôtre Dame de la Garde, she devoutly crosses herself and tells her beads.
Reuben is to make the voyage with the mother of Adèle. Both bound to the same quiet township of New England; he, to reach Ashfield once more, there to undergo swiftly a new experience,—an experience that can come to no man but once; she, to be clasped in the arms of Adèle,—a cold embrace and the last!
PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.
V.
Brook Farm, Sept. 26, 1841.—A walk this morning along the Needham road. A clear, breezy morning, after nearly a week of cloudy and showery weather. The grass is much more fresh and vivid than it was last month, and trees still retain much of their verdure, though here and there is a shrub or a bough arrayed in scarlet and gold. Along the road, in the midst of a beaten track, I saw mushrooms or toadstools, which had sprung up probably during the night.
The houses in this vicinity are, many of them, quite antique, with long, sloping roofs, commencing at a few feet from the ground, and ending in a lofty peak. Some of them have huge, old elms overshadowing the yard. One may see the family sleigh near the door, it having stood there all through the summer sunshine, and perhaps with weeds sprouting through the crevices of its bottom, the growth of the months since snow departed. Old barns, patched and supported by timbers leaning against the sides, and stained with the excrement of past ages.
In the forenoon, I walked along the edge of the meadow, towards Cow Island. Large trees, almost a wood, principally of pine with the green pasture-glades intermixed, and cattle feeding. They cease grazing when an intruder appears, and look at him with long and wary observation, then bend their heads to the pasture again. Where the firm ground of the pasture ceases, the meadow begins,—loose, spongy, yielding to the tread, sometimes permitting the foot to sink into black mud, or perhaps over ankles in water. Cattle paths, somewhat firmer than the general surface, traverse the dense shrubbery which has overgrown the meadow. This shrubbery consists of small birch, elders, maples, and other trees, with here and there white pines of larger growth. The whole is tangled and wild and thick-set, so that it is necessary to part the nestling stems and branches, and go crashing through. There are creeping plants of various sorts, which clamber up the trees, and some of them have changed color in the slight frosts which already have befallen these low grounds, so that one sees a spiral wreath of scarlet leaves twining up to the top of a green tree, intermingling its bright hues with their verdure, as if all were of one piece. Sometimes, instead of scarlet, the spiral wreath is of a golden yellow.
Within the verge of the meadow, mostly near the firm shore of pasture ground, I found several grape-vines, hung with an abundance of large purple grapes. The vines had caught hold of maples and alders, and climbed to the summit, curling round about and interwreathing their twisted folds in so intimate a manner that it was not easy to tell the parasite from the supporting tree or shrub. Sometimes the same vine had enveloped several shrubs, and caused a strange, tangled confusion, converting all these poor plants to the purpose of its own support, and hindering their growing to their own benefit and convenience. The broad vine-leaves, some of them yellow or yellowish-tinged, were seen apparently glowing on the same stems with the silver-maple leaves, and those of the other shrubs, thus married against their will by the conjugal twine; and the purple clusters of grapes hung down from above and in the midst, so that one might "gather grapes," if not "of thorns," yet of as alien bushes.