entered my heart of hearts? I stretched out my hand, and it touched none

whose sensations were responsive to mine. I was girded, walled in, vaulted

over, by seven-fold barriers of loneliness. Occupation alone, if I could

deliver myself up to it, would be capable of affording an opiate to my

sleepless sense of woe. Having determined to make Rome my abode, at least

for some months, I made arrangements for my accommodation--I selected my

home. The Colonna Palace was well adapted for my purpose. Its grandeur--

its treasure of paintings, its magnificent halls were objects soothing and

even exhilarating.

I found the granaries of Rome well stored with grain, and particularly with

Indian corn; this product requiring less art in its preparation for food, I

selected as my principal support. I now found the hardships and lawlessness

of my youth turn to account. A man cannot throw off the habits of sixteen

years. Since that age, it is true, I had lived luxuriously, or at least

surrounded by all the conveniences civilization afforded. But before that

time, I had been "as uncouth a savage, as the wolf-bred founder of old

Rome"--and now, in Rome itself, robber and shepherd propensities, similar

to those of its founder, were of advantage to its sole inhabitant. I spent

the morning riding and shooting in the Campagna--I passed long hours in

the various galleries--I gazed at each statue, and lost myself in a

reverie before many a fair Madonna or beauteous nymph. I haunted the

Vatican, and stood surrounded by marble forms of divine beauty. Each stone

deity was possessed by sacred gladness, and the eternal fruition of love.

They looked on me with unsympathizing complacency, and often in wild

accents I reproached them for their supreme indifference--for they were

608

The Last Man