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At last there is a break in the dull uniformity of Roman life. There is a ripple on the waters, whether the precursor of a tempest, or to be followed by a dead calm, it is hard to tell. Meanwhile it is some gain at any rate, that the old corpse-like city should show signs of life, however transient. Feeble as those symptoms are, let us make the most of them.
With a natural transition I turned my eyes from them to the bed in which the body lay; and, great God! what was the revulsion, the horror which I experienced on seeing the corpse-like terrific thing seated half upright before me; the white cloths which had been wound about the head had now partly slipped from their position, and were hanging in grotesque festoons about the face and shoulders, while the distorted eyes leered from amid them
Mulworth crossed, with a thick-set, lantern-jawed, and very bald man, who was probably Jimber. Claude followed two or three yards behind them, and disappeared. His face looked ghastly under the stream of amber light. "It's dreadful to see people on the stage not made up!" said Charmian. "They all look so corpse-like. O Alston, are we going to have a success?" "What! You beginning to doubt!"
Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave cerements and corpse-like mask, which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.
The suppression of that very dreadful piece of stage pageantry has at last, I believe, been conceded to the better taste of modern audiences; but even in my time it was still performed, and an exact representation of a funeral procession, such as one meets every day in Rome, with torch-bearing priests, and bier covered with its black-velvet pall, embroidered with skull and cross-bones, with a corpse-like figure stretched upon it, marched round the stage, chanting some portion of the fine Roman Catholic requiem music.
Yet you stand there and irritate me with your chatter of another world. Come, let us try to talk sensibly. Let us wait for a moment till we are calmer. You cannot dismiss me in this way, I cannot leave you here. It is because you are here that you are so corpse-like, so cold that I dare not touch you. We won't talk any more just now. We will wait a little.
Methinks, but for your presence, I could suppose the whole had passed in my sleep; that horrible thrust that death-like, corpse-like old man that soldier in mute despair; I must indeed have dreamed."
The thought occurred to me before, but it was in a moment of cowardice and with the idea of disappearing and of returning to live in peace in my little nook: whereas now, if I go off, it will be as an avenger, a judge, to cry aloud to all the world from Paris, to proclaim what I have seen in Rome, what men have done there with the Christianity of Jesus, the Vatican falling into dust, the corpse-like odour which comes from it, the idiotic illusions of those who hope that they will one day see a renascence of the modern soul arise from a sepulchre where the remnants of dead centuries rot and slumber.
They were those of sombre men who had walked through hell like Dante, and who bore upon their calm and corpse-like features the deep-cut traces of the flame and horror.
However far in the future it may be, what ages may elapse, what eternities may pass before any individual now a mortal being may attain the rank and sanctity of godship, man nevertheless carries in his soul the possibilities of such achievement; even as the crawling caterpillar or the corpse-like chrysalis holds the latent possibility, nay, barring destruction, the certainty indeed, of the winged imago in all the glory of maturity.
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