They echoed fervently the sublime cry of the poet--_Eine Welt zwar bist
du, O Rom!_ Thou art a world in thyself, oh Rome! But as without love
the world would not be the world, so Rome without love would not be
Rome, and the stairway of the Trinita, glorified by the slow ascension
of the Day, became the Stairway of Felicity by the ascent of Elena the
Fair on her way to the Palazzo Zuccari.
'At times,' Elena said to him, 'my feeling for you is so delicate, so
profound, that it becomes--how shall I describe it?--maternal almost!'
Andrea laughed, for she was his senior by barely three years.
'And at times,' he rejoined, 'I feel the communion of our spirits to be
so chaste that I could call you sister while I kiss your hands.'
These fallacious ideas of purity and loftiness of sentiment were but the
reaction after more carnal delights, when the soul experiences a vague
yearning for the ideal. At such times too, the young man's aspirations
towards the art he so much loved were apt to revive. The desire to give
pleasure to his mistress by his literary or artistic efforts drove him
to work. He accordingly wrote _La Simona_, and executed his two
engravings: _The Zodiac_ and _Alexander's Bowl_.
For the execution of his art, he chose by preference, the most
difficult, exact, and incorruptible vehicles--verse and engraving; and
he aimed at adhering strictly to, and reviving, the traditional Italian
methods, by going back to the poets of the _stil novo_, and the painters
who were precursors of the Renaissance.
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