University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.
THE OWL TOWER.

“Will you not show me your tower?” said the sculptor
one day to his friend.

“It is plainly enough to be seen, methinks,” answered
the count, with a kind of sulkiness that often appeared in
him, as one of the little symptoms of inward trouble.

“Yes; its exterior is visible far and wide,” said Kenyon.
“But such a gray, moss-grown tower as this, however
valuable as an object of scenery, will certainly be
quite as interesting inside as out. It cannot be less than
six hundred years old; the foundations and lower story
are much older than that, I should judge; and traditions
probably cling to the walls within quite as plentifully as
the gray and yellow lichens cluster on its face without.”

“No doubt,” replied Donatello; “but I know little of
such things, and never could comprehend the interest
which some of you Forestieri take in them. A year or
two ago an English signor with a venerable white beard
— they say he was a magician, too — came hither from
as far off as Florence, just to see my tower.”

“Ah, I have seen him at Florence,” observed Kenyon.

“He is a necromancer, as you say, and dwells in an old
mansion of the Knights Templars, close by the Ponte
Vecchio, with a great many ghostly books, pictures, and
antiquities, to make the house gloomy, and one bright-eyed
little girl to keep it cheerful!”

“I know him only by his white beard,” said Donatello;
“but he could have told you a great deal about the tower,
and the sieges which it has stood, and the prisoners who
have been confined in it. And he gathered up all the
traditions of the Monte Beni family, and, among the rest,
the sad one which I told you at the fountain the other
day. He had known mighty poets, he said, in his earlier
life; and the most illustrious of them would have rejoiced
to preserve such a legend in immortal rhyme — especially
if he could have had some of our wine of Sunshine to
help out his inspiration!”

“Any man might be a poet, as well as Byron, with
such wine and such a theme,” rejoined the sculptor.
“But, shall we climb your tower? The thunderstorm
gathering yonder among the hills will be a spectacle
worth witnessing.”

“Come, then,” said the Count, adding, with a sigh, “it
has a weary staircase, and dismal chambers, and it is very
lonesome at the summit!”

“Like a man's life, when he has climbed to eminence,”
remarked the sculptor; “or, let us rather say, with its
difficult steps, and the dark prison-cells you speak of,
your tower resembles the spiritual experience of many
a sinful soul, which, nevertheless, may struggle upward
into the pure air and light of Heaven at last!”

Donatello sighed again, and led the way up into the
tower.

Mounting the broad staircase that ascended from the
entrance hall, they traversed the great wilderness of a
house, through some obscure passages, and came to a low,
ancient door-way. It admitted them to a narrow turret-stair
which zigzagged upward, lighted in its progress by
loopholes and iron-barred windows. Reaching the top
of the first flight, the Count threw open a door of worm-eaten
oak, and disclosed a chamber that occupied the
whole area of the tower. It was most pitiably forlorn
of aspect, with a brick-paved floor, bare holes through
the massive walls, grated with iron, instead of windows,
and for furniture an old stool, which increased the dreariness
of the place tenfold, by suggesting an idea of its
having once been tenanted.

“This was a prisoner's cell in the old days,” said Donatello;
“the white-bearded necromancer, of whom I
told you, found out that a certain famous monk was confined
here, about five hundred years ago. He was a very
holy man, and was afterwards burned at the stake in the
Grand-ducal Square at Firenze. There have always
been stories, Tomaso says, of a hooded monk creeping up
and down these stairs, or standing in the door-way of this
chamber. It must needs be the ghost of the ancient prisoner.
Do you believe in ghosts?”

“I can hardly tell,” replied Kenyon; “on the whole,
I think not.”

“Neither do I,” responded the Count; “for, if spirits
ever come back, I should surely have met one within

these two months past. Ghosts never rise! So much I
know, and am glad to know it!”

Following the narrow staircase still higher, they came
to another room of similar size and equally forlorn, but
inhabited by two personages of a race which from time
immemorial have held proprietorship and occupancy in
ruined towers. These were a pair of owls, who, being
doubtless acquainted with Donatello, showed little sign
of alarm at the entrance of visitors. They gave a dismal
croak or two, and hopped aside into the darkest corner;
since it was not yet their hour to flap duskily abroad.

“They do not desert me, like my other feathered acquaintances,”
observed the young count, with a sad smile,
alluding to the scene which Kenyon had witnessed at the
fountain side. “When I was a wild, playful boy, the
owls did not love me half so well.”

He made no further pause here, but led his friend up
another flight of steps; while, at every stage, the windows
and narrow loopholes afforded Kenyon more extensive
eyeshots over hill and valley, and allowed him to taste
the cool purity of mid-atmosphere. At length they
reached the topmost chamber, directly beneath the roof
of the tower.

“This is my own abode,” said Donatello; “my own
owl's nest.”

In fact, the room was fitted up as a bedchamber,
though in a style of the utmost simplicity. It likewise
served as an oratory; there being a crucifix in one corner,
and a multitude of holy emblems, such as Catholics judge
it necessary to help their devotion withal. Several ugly

little prints, representing the sufferings of the Saviour,
and the martyrdoms of saints, hung on the wall; and, behind
the crucifix, there was a good copy of Titian's Magdalen
of the Pitti Palace, clad only in the flow of her
golden ringlets. She had a confident look, (but it was
Titian's fault, not the penitent woman's,) as if expecting
to win heaven by the free display of her earthly charms.
Inside of a glass case, appeared an image of the sacred
Bambino, in the guise of a little waxen boy, very prettily
made, reclining among flowers, like a Cupid, and holding
up a heart that resembled a bit of red sealing-wax. A
small vase of precious marble was full of holy water.

Beneath the crucifix, on a table, lay a human skull,
which looked as if it might have been dug up out of some
old grave. But, examining it more closely, Kenyon saw
that it was carved in gray alabaster, most skilfully done
to the death, with accurate imitation of the teeth, the
sutures, the empty eye-caverns, and the fragile little bones
of the nose. This hideous emblem rested on a cushion
of white marble, so nicely wrought that you seemed to
see the impression of the heavy skull in a silken and
downy substance.

Donatello dipped his fingers into the holy-water vase,
and crossed himself. After doing so, he trembled.

“I have no right to make the sacred symbol on a sinful
breast!” he said.

“On what mortal breast can it be made then?” asked
the sculptor. “Is there one that hides no sin?”

“But these blessed emblems make you smile, I fear,”
resumed the Count, looking askance at his friend. “You

heretics, I know, attempt to pray without even a crucifix
to kneel at.”

“I, at least, whom you call a heretic, reverence that
holy symbol,” answered Kenyon. “What I am most inclined
to murmur at, is this death's head. I could laugh,
moreover, in its ugly face! It is absurdly monstrous, my
dear friend, thus to fling the dead weight of our mortality
upon our immortal hopes. While we live on earth, 'tis
true, we must needs carry our skeletons about with us;
but, for heaven's sake, do not let us burden our spirits with
them, in our feeble efforts to soar upward! Believe me,
it will change the whole aspect of death, if you can once
disconnect it, in your idea, with that corruption from
which it disengages our higher part.”

“I do not well understand you,” said Donatello; and
he took up the alabaster skull, shuddering, and evidently
feeling it a kind of penance to touch it. “I only know
that this skull has been in my family for centuries. Old
Tomaso has a story that it was copied by a famous sculptor
from the skull of that same unhappy knight who loved
the fountain-lady, and lost her by a blood-stain. He
lived and died with a deep sense of sin upon him, and, on
his death-bed, he ordained that this token of him should
go down to his posterity. And my forefathers, being a
cheerful race of men in their natural disposition, found it
needful to have the skull often before their eyes, because
they dearly loved life and its enjoyments, and hated the
very thought of death.”

“I am afraid,” said Kenyon, “they liked it none the
better, for seeing its face under this abominable mask.”

Without further discussion, the Count led the way up
one more flight of stairs, at the end of which they
emerged upon the summit of the tower. The sculptor
felt as if his being were suddenly magnified a hundred-fold;
so wide was the Umbrian valley that suddenly
opened before him, set in its grand framework of nearer
and more distant hills. It seemed as if all Italy lay
under his eyes in that one picture. For there was the
broad, sunny smile of God, which we fancy to be spread
over that favored land more abundantly than on other
regions, and, beneath it, glowed a most rich and varied
fertility. The trim vineyards were there, and the figtress,
and the mulberries, and the smoky-hued tracts of
the olive-orchards; there, too, were fields of every kind
of grain, among which waved the Indian corn, putting
Kenyon in mind of the fondly-remembered acres of his
father's homestead. White villas, gray convents, church-spires,
villages, towns, each with its battlemented walls
and towered gateway, were scattered upon this spacious
map; a river gleamed across it; and lakes opened their
blue eyes in its face, reflecting heaven, lest mortals should
forget that better land, when they beheld the earth so
beautiful.

What made the valley look still wider, was the two or
three varieties of weather that were visible on its surface,
all at the same instant of time. Here lay the quiet sunshine;
there fell the great black patches of ominous
shadow from the clouds; and behind them, like a giant
of league-long strides, came hurrying the thunderstorm,
which had already swept midway across the plain. In

the rear of the approaching tempest, brightened forth
again the sunny splendor, which its progress had darkened
with so terrible a frown.

All round this majestic landscape, the bald-peaked or
forest-crowned mountains descended boldly upon the
plain. On many of their spurs and midway declivities,
and even on their summits, stood cities, some of them
famous of old; for these had been the seats and nurseries
of early art, where the flower of beauty sprang out of a
rocky soil, and in a high, keen atmosphere, when the
richest and most sheltered gardens failed to nourish it.

“Thank God for letting me again behold this scene!”
said the sculptor, a devout man in his way, reverently
taking off his hat. “I have viewed it from many points,
and never without as full a sensation of gratitude as my
heart seems capable of feeling. How it strengthens the
poor human spirit in its reliance on His providence, to
ascend but this little way above the common level, and so
attain a somewhat wider glimpse of His dealings with
mankind! He doeth all things right! His will be done!”

“You discern something that is hidden from me,” observed
Donatello, gloomily, yet striving with unwonted
grasp to catch the analogies which so cheered his friend.
“I see sunshine on one spot, and cloud in another, and no
reason for it in either case. The sun on you; the cloud
on me! What comfort can I draw from this?”

“Nay; I cannot preach,” said Kenyon, “with a page
of heaven and a page of earth spread wide open before
us! Only begin to read it, and you will find it interpreting
itself without the aid of words. It is a great mistake

to try to put our best thoughts into human language.
When we ascend into the higher regions of emotion and
spiritual enjoyment, they are only expressible by such
grand hieroglyphics as these around us.”

They stood awhile, contemplating the scene; but, as
inevitably happens after a spiritual flight, it was not long
before the sculptor felt his wings flagging in the rarity of
the upper atmosphere. He was glad to let himself quietly
downward out of the mid-sky, as it were, and alight on
the solid platform of the battlemented tower. He looked
about him, and beheld growing out of the stone pavement,
which formed the roof, a little shrub, with green and glossy
leaves. It was the only green thing there; and heaven
knows how its seeds had ever been planted, at that airy
height, or how it had found nourishment for its small life,
in the chinks of the stones; for it had no earth, and nothing
more like soil than the crumbling mortar, which had
been crammed into the crevices in a long-past age.

Yet the plant seemed fond of its native site; and
Donatello said it had always grown there, from his earliest
remembrance, and never, he believed, any smaller or
any larger than they saw it now.

“I wonder if the shrub teaches you any good lesson,”
said he, observing the interest with which Kenyon examined
it. “If the wide valley has a great meaning, the
plant ought to have at least a little one; and it has been
growing on our tower long enough to have learned how
to speak it.”

“Oh, certainly!” answered the sculptor; “the shrub has
its moral, or it would have perished long ago. And, no

doubt, it is for your use and edification, since you have
had it before your eyes all your lifetime, and now are
moved to ask what may be its lesson.”

“It teaches me nothing,” said the simple Donatello,
stooping over the plant, and perplexing himself with a
minute scrutiny. “But here was a worm that would
have killed it; an ugly creature, which I will fling over
the battlements.”