But to return to our museum. Upon ascending the stairs one's eyes first rest upon the "very saddest face ever painted or conceived," as Hawthorne describes the beautiful Cenci. While in Rome I resided upon the Piazza Barberini, opposite the palace containing this exquisite painting, and I visited it with a devotion almost equalling Hilda's. Much excitement prevailed that winter in art circles concerning the authenticity of this picture, and hot discussions took place wherever the believers and unbelievers chanced to meet. No possible proof existed, one party would declare, that Guido had ever painted Beatrice Cenci; and no one had thought of it as other than a fancy head until Shelley had aroused the interest of the public in the half-forgotten tragedy of poor Beatrice's sad life by the sombre drama, "The Cenci." From that time, they say, caprice has christened this picture Beatrice Cenci, and Hawthorne has added much to its interest by the prominence he gives it in the "Marble Faun." They, however, are unable to find the traces of sorrow, the "tear-stained cheeks" and "eyes that have wept till they can weep no more," so eloquently described by all writers and art-critics of the present day; and so far I agree with them--the face does not impress me with such depths of woe. Their opponents, however, hold the time-honored tradition that Guido painted Beatrice in her cell upon the morning of her execution, or as she stood upon the scaffold--for there are two versions of the story--and that the gown and turban which she wears were made by her own hands on the night preceding the fatal day. But no words of mine can give a fair idea of this celebrated painting: I will transcribe Hawthorne's description of it. "The picture represented simply a female head; a very youthful, girlish, perfectly beautiful face, enveloped in white drapery, from beneath which strayed a lock or two of what seemed a rich though hidden luxuriance of auburn hair. The eyes were large and brown, and met those of the spectator, but evidently with a strange, ineffectual effort to escape. There was a little redness about the eyes, very slightly indicated, so that you would question whether or no the girl had been weeping. The whole face was quiet; there was no distortion or disturbance of any single feature, nor was it easy to see why the expression was not cheerful, or why a single touch of the artist's pencil should not brighten it into joyousness. But in fact it was the very saddest picture ever painted or conceived; it involved an unfathomable depth of sorrow, the sense of which came to the observer by a sort of intuition. It was a sorrow that removed this beautiful girl out of the sphere of humanity, and set her in a far-off region, the remoteness of which--while yet her face is so close before us--makes us shiver as at a spectre."