RomeOne warm, still day, late in the Roman autumn, our two young men were sitting beneath one of the high-stemmed pines of the Villa Ludovisi.
They had been spending an hour in the mouldy little garden-house, where the colossal mask of the famous Juno looks out with blank eyes from that dusky corner which must seem to her the last possible stage of a lapse from Olympus.Then they had wandered out into the gardens, and were lounging away the morning under the spell of their magical picturesqueness.
Roderick declared that he would go nowhere else; that, after the Juno, it was a profanation to look at anything but sky and trees.
There was a fresco of Guercino, to which Rowland, though he had seen it on his former visit to Rome, went dutifully to pay his respects.
But Roderick, though he had never seen it, declared that it could n't be worth a fig, and that he did n't care to look at ugly things.
He remained stretched on his overcoat, which he had spread on the grass, while Rowland went off envying the intellectual comfort of genius, which can arrive at serene conclusions without disagreeable processes.
When the latter came back, his friend was sitting with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.Rowland, in the geniality of a mood attuned to the mellow charm of a Roman villa, found a good word to say for the Guercino; but he chiefly talked of the view from the little belvedere on the roof of the casino, and how it looked like the prospect from a castle turret in a fairy tale.
"Very likely," said Roderick, throwing himself back with a yawn.
"But I must let it pass.I have seen enough for the present;I have reached the top of the hill.I have an indigestion of impressions; I must work them off before I go in for any more.
I don't want to look at any more of other people's works, for a month--not even at Nature's own.I want to look at Roderick Hudson's.
The result of it all is that I 'm not afraid.I can but try, as well as the rest of them! The fellow who did that gazing goddess yonder only made an experiment.The other day, when I was looking at Michael Angelo's Moses, I was seized with a kind of defiance--a reaction against all this mere passive enjoyment of grandeur.
It was a rousing great success, certainly, that rose there before me, but somehow it was not an inscrutable mystery, and it seemed to me, not perhaps that I should some day do as well, but that at least I might!""As you say, you can but try," said Rowland."Success is only passionate effort.""Well, the passion is blazing; we have been piling on fuel handsomely.
It came over me just now that it is exactly three months to a day since Ileft Northampton.I can't believe it!"
"It certainly seems more."
"It seems like ten years.What an exquisite ass I was!""Do you feel so wise now?"
"Verily! Don't I look so? Surely I have n't the same face.
Have n't I a different eye, a different expression, a different voice?""I can hardly say, because I have seen the transition.
But it 's very likely.You are, in the literal sense of the word, more civilized.I dare say," added Rowland, "that Miss Garland would think so.""That 's not what she would call it; she would say I was corrupted."Rowland asked few questions about Miss Garland, but he always listened narrowly to his companion's voluntary observations.
"Are you very sure?" he replied.
"Why, she 's a stern moralist, and she would infer from my appearance that I had become a cynical sybarite."Roderick had, in fact, a Venetian watch-chain round his neck and a magnificent Roman intaglio on the third finger of his left hand.
"Will you think I take a liberty," asked Rowland, "if I say you judge her superficially?""For heaven's sake," cried Roderick, laughing, "don't tell me she 's not a moralist! It was for that I fell in love with her, and with rigid virtue in her person.""She is a moralist, but not, as you imply, a narrow one.
That 's more than a difference in degree; it 's a difference in kind.
I don't know whether I ever mentioned it, but I admire her extremely.
There is nothing narrow about her but her experience; everything else is large.My impression of her is of a person of great capacity, as yet wholly unmeasured and untested.Some day or other, I 'm sure, she will judge fairly and wisely of everything.""Stay a bit!" cried Roderick; "you 're a better Catholic than the Pope.
I shall be content if she judges fairly of me--of my merits, that is.
The rest she must not judge at all.She 's a grimly devoted little creature;may she always remain so! Changed as I am, I adore her none the less.
What becomes of all our emotions, our impressions," he went on, after a long pause, "all the material of thought that life pours into us at such a rate during such a memorable three months as these?
There are twenty moments a week--a day, for that matter, some days--that seem supreme, twenty impressions that seem ultimate, that appear to form an intellectual era.But others come treading on their heels and sweeping them along, and they all melt like water into water and settle the question of precedence among themselves.
The curious thing is that the more the mind takes in, the more it has space for, and that all one's ideas are like the Irish people at home who live in the different corners of a room, and take boarders.""I fancy it is our peculiar good luck that we don't see the limits of our minds," said Rowland."We are young, compared with what we may one day be.That belongs to youth; it is perhaps the best part of it.
They say that old people do find themselves at last face to face with a solid blank wall, and stand thumping against it in vain.
It resounds, it seems to have something beyond it, but it won't move!
That 's only a reason for living with open doors as long as we can!""Open doors?" murmured Roderick."Yes, let us close no doors that open upon Rome.For this, for the mind, is eternal summer!