In like
manner Story's statue of Cleopatra was to be seen, because it was the
"original" of the imaginary sculptor Kenyon's Cleopatra, and a certain
mediaeval tower was sacred because it was universally identified as the
tower where the heroine Hilda lived dreaming and drawing, and fed the
doves that circled around its top. We used to show the new arrivals
where Hilda's tower was, and then stand with them watching the pigeons
which made it unmistakable. I should then have thought I could never
forget it, but I must have passed it several times unnoting in my latest
Roman sojourn, when one afternoon in a pilgrimage to the Via del Gambero
a contemporary of that earlier day glanced around the narrow piazza
through which we were passing and, seeing a cloud of doves wheeling
aloft, joyfully shouted, "Look! There is Hilda's tower!" and if Hilda
herself had waved to us from its battlements we could not have been
surer of it. The present vanished, and we were restored to our
citizenship in that Rome of the imagination which is greater than any
material Rome, and which it needs no archaeologist to discover in its
indestructible integrity.
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