the burial chant
the church of the capuchins (where, as the reader may remember, some of our acquaintances had made an engagement to meet) stands a little aside from the piazza barberini.thither, at the hour agreed upon, on the morning after the scenes last described, miriam and donatello directed their steps.at no time are people so sedulously careful to keep their trifling appointments, attend to their ordinary occupations, and thus put a commonplace aspect on life, as when conscious of some secret that if suspected would make them look monstrous in the general eye.
yet how tame and wearisome is the impression of all ordinary things in the contrast with such a fact! how sick and tremulous, the next morning, is the spirit that has dared so much only the night before! how icy cold is the heart, when the fervor, the wild ecstasy of passion has faded away, and sunk down among the dead ashes of the fire that blazed so fiercely, and was fed by the very substance of its life! how faintly does the criminal stagger onward, lacking the impulse of that strong madness that hurried him into guilt, and treacherously deserts him in the midst of it!
when miriam and donatello drew near the church, they found only kenyon awaiting them on the steps.hilda had likewise promised to be of the party, but had not yet appeared. meeting the sculptor, miriam put a force upon herself and succeeded in creating an artificial flow of spirits, which, to any but the nicest observation, was quite as effective as a natural one.she spoke sympathizingly to the sculptor on the subject of hilda's absence, and somewhat annoyed him by alluding in donatello's hearing to an attachment which had never been openly avowed, though perhaps plainly enough betrayed.he fancied that miriam did not quite recognize the limits of the strictest delicacy; he even went so far as to generalize, and conclude within himself, that this deficiency is a more general failing in woman than in man, the highest refinement being a masculine attribute.