University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.
ON THE BATTLEMENTS.

The sculptor now looked through an embrasure, and
threw down a bit of lime, watching its fall, till it struck
upon a stone bench at the rocky foundation of the tower,
and flew into many fragments.

“Pray pardon me for helping Time to crumble away
your ancestral walls,” said he. “But I am one of those
persons who have a natural tendency to climb heights,
and to stand on the verge of them, measuring the depth
below. If I were to do just as I like, at this moment, I
should fling myself down after that bit of lime. It is a
very singular temptation, and all but irresistible; partly,
I believe, because it might be so easily done, and partly
because such momentous consequences would ensue, without
my being compelled to wait a moment for them.
Have you never felt this strange impulse of an evil spirit
at your back, shoving you towards a precipice?”

“Ah, no!” cried Donatello, shrinking from the battlemented
wall with a face of horror. “I cling to life in a
way which you cannot conceive; it has been so rich, so
warm, so sunny! — and beyond its verge, nothing but the

chilly dark! And then a fall from a precipice is such an
awful death!”

“Nay; if it be a great height,” said Kenyon, “a man
would leave his life in the air, and never feel the hard
shock at the bottom.”

“That is not the way with this kind of death!” exclaimed
Donatello, in a low, horror-stricken voice, which
grew higher and more full of emotion as he proceeded.
“Imagine a fellow-creature, — breathing, now, and looking
you in the face, — and now tumbling down, down, down,
with a long shriek wavering after him, all the way! He
does not leave his life in the air! No; but it keeps in
him till he thumps against the stones, a horribly long
while; then, he lies there frightfully quiet, a dead heap
of bruised flesh and broken bones! A quiver runs
through the crushed mass; and no more movement after
that! No; not if you would give your soul to make him
stir a finger! Ah, terrible! Yes, yes; I would fain
fling myself down for the very dread of it, that I might
endure it once for all, and dream of it no more!”

“How forcibly — how frightfully you conceive this!”
said the sculptor, aghast at the passionate horror which
was betrayed in the count's words, and still more in his
wild gestures and ghastly look. “Nay, if the height of
your tower affects your imagination thus, you do wrong
to trust yourself here in solitude, and in the night-time,
and at all unguarded hours. You are not safe in your
chamber. It is but a step or two; and what if a vivid
dream should lead you up hither, at midnight, and act
itself out as a reality!”

Donatello had hidden his face in his hands, and was
leaning against the parapet.

“No fear of that!” said he. “Whatever the dream
may be, I am too genuine a coward to act out my own
death in it.”

The paroxysm passed away, and the two friends continued
their desultory talk, very much as if no such interruption
had occurred. Nevertheless, it affected the
sculptor with infinite pity to see this young man, who had
been born to gladness as an assured heritage, now involved
in a misty bewilderment of grievous thoughts, amid which
he seemed to go staggering blindfold. Kenyon, not without
an unshaped suspicion of the definite fact, knew that
his condition must have resulted from the weight and
gloom of life, now first, through the agency of a secret
trouble, making themselves felt on a character that had
heretofore breathed only an atmosphere of joy. The
effect of this hard lesson, upon Donatello's intellect and
disposition, was very striking. It was perceptible that
he had already had glimpses of strange and subtle matters
in those dark caverns, into which all men must descend,
if they would know anything beneath the surface
and illusive pleasures of existence. And when they
emerge, though dazzled and blinded by the first glare of
daylight, they take truer and sadder views of life forever
afterwards.

From some mysterious source, as the sculptor felt assured,
a soul had been inspired into the young count's
simplicity, since their intercourse in Rome. He now
showed a far deeper sense, and an intelligence that began

to deal with high subjects, though in a feeble and childish
way. He evinced, too, a more definite and nobler individuality,
but developed out of grief and pain, and fearfully
conscious of the pangs that had given it birth.
Every human life, if it ascends to truth or delves down
to reality, must undergo a similar change; but sometimes,
perhaps, the instruction comes without the sorrow; and
oftener the sorrow teaches no lesson that abides with us.
In Donatello's case, it was pitiful, and almost ludicrous,
to observe the confused struggle that he made; how completely
he was taken by surprise; how ill-prepared he
stood, on this old battle-field of the world, to fight with
such an inevitable foe as mortal calamity, and sin for its
stronger ally.

“And yet,” thought Kenyon, “the poor fellow bears
himself like a hero, too! If he would only tell me his
trouble, or give me an opening to speak frankly about it,
I might help him; but he finds it too horrible to be
uttered, and fancies himself the only mortal that ever
felt the anguish of remorse. Yes; he believes that nobody
ever endured his agony before; so that — sharp
enough in itself — it has all the additional zest of a torture
just invented to plague him individually.”

The sculptor endeavored to dismiss the painful subject
from his mind; and, leaning against the battlements,
he turned his face southward and westward, and gazed
across the breadth of the valley. His thoughts flew far
beyond even those wide boundaries, taking an air-line
from Donatello's tower to another turret that ascended
into the sky of the summer afternoon, invisibly to him,

above the roofs of distant Rome. Then rose tumultuously
into his consciousness that strong love for Hilda,
which it was his habit to confine in one of the heart's
inner chambers, because he had found no encouragement
to bring it forward. But now, he felt a strange pull at
his heartstrings. It could not have been more perceptible,
if all the way between these battlements and Hilda's
dove-cote, had stretched an exquisitely sensitive cord,
which, at the hither end, was knotted with his aforesaid
heartstrings, and, at the remoter one, was grasped by a
gentle hand. His breath grew tremulous. He put his
hand to his breast; so distinctly did he seem to feel that
cord drawn once — and again, and again, as if — though
still it was bashfully intimated — there were an importunate
demand for his presence. Oh! for the white wings
of Hilda's doves, that he might have flown thither, and
alighted at the virgin's shrine!

But lovers, and Kenyon knew it well, project so life-like
a copy of their mistresses out of their own imaginations,
that it can pull at the heartstrings almost as perceptibly
as the genuine original. No airy intimations are
to be trusted; no evidences of responsive affection less
positive than whispered and broken words, or tender pressures
of the hand, allowed and half-returned; or glances,
that distil many passionate avowals into one gleam of
richly-colored light. Even these should be weighed
rigorously, at the instant; for, in another instant, the
imagination seizes on them as its property, and stamps
them with its own arbitrary value. But Hilda's maidenly
reserve had given her lover no such tokens, to be interpreted
either by his hopes or fears.

“Yonder, over mountain and valley, lies Rome,” said
the sculptor; “shall you return thither in the autumn?”

“Never! I hate Rome,” answered Donatello; “and
have good cause.”

“And yet it was a pleasant winter that we spent there,”
observed Kenyon, “and with pleasant friends about us.
You would meet them again there — all of them.”

“All?” asked Donatello.

“All, to the best of my belief,” said the sculptor; “but
you need not go to Rome to seek them. If there were
one of those friends whose lifetime was twisted with your
own, I am enough of a fatalist to feel assured that you
will meet that one again, wander whither you may.
Neither can we escape the companions whom Providence
assigns for us, by climbing an old tower like
this.”

“Yet the stairs are steep and dark,” rejoined the Count;
“none but yourself would seek me here, or find me, if
they sought.”

As Donatello did not take advantage of this opening
which his friend had kindly afforded him, to pour out his
hidden troubles, the latter again threw aside the subject,
and returned to the enjoyment of the scene before him.
The thunderstorm, which he had beheld striding across
the valley, had passed to the left of Monte Beni, and was
continuing its march towards the hills that formed the
boundary on the eastward. Above the whole valley, indeed,
the sky was heavy with tumbling vapors interspersed
with which were tracts of blue, vividly brightened
by the sun; but, in the east, where the tempest was yet

trailing its ragged skirts, lay a dusky region of cloud and
sullen mist, in which some of the hills appeared of a dark-purple
hue. Others became so indistinct, that the spectator
could not tell rocky height from impalpable cloud.
Far into this misty cloud-region, however, — within the
domain of chaos, as it were, — hill-tops were seen brightening
in the sunshine; they looked like fragments of the
world, broken adrift and based on nothingness, or like
portions of a sphere destined to exist, but not yet finally
compacted.

The sculptor, habitually drawing many of the images
and illustrations of his thoughts from the plastic art, fancied
that the scene represented the process of the Creator,
when He held the new, imperfect earth in His hand, and
modelled it.

“What a magic is in mist and vapor among the
mountains!” he exclaimed. “With their help, one
single scene becomes a thousand. The cloud-scenery
gives such variety to a hilly landscape that it would be
worth while to journalize its aspect from hour to hour.
A cloud, however, — as I have myself experienced, — is
apt to grow solid and as heavy as a stone the instant that
you take in hand to describe it. But, in my own heart, I
have found great use in clouds. Such silvery ones as
those to the northward, for example, have often suggested
sculpturesque groups, figures, and attitudes; they are especially
rich in attitudes of living repose, which a sculptor
only hits upon by the rarest good fortune. When I go
back to my dear native land, the clouds along the horizon
will be my only gallery of art!”

“I can see cloud-shapes too,” said Donatello; “yonder
is one that shifts strangely; it has been like people whom
I knew. And now, if I watch it a little longer, it will
take the figure of a monk reclining, with his cowl about
his head and drawn partly over his face, and — well! did
I not tell you so?”

“I think,” remarked Kenyon, “we can hardly be
gazing at the same cloud. What I behold is a reclining
figure, to be sure, but feminine, and with a despondent
air, wonderfully well expressed in the wavering outline
from head to foot. It moves my very heart by something
indefinable that it suggests.”

“I see the figure, and almost the face,” said the Count,
adding, in a lower voice, “It is Miriam's!”

“No, not Miriam's,” answered the sculptor.

While the two gazers thus found their own reminiscences
and presentiments floating among the clouds, the
day drew to its close, and now showed them the fair spectacle
of an Italian sunset. The sky was soft and bright,
but not so gorgeous as Kenyon had seen it, a thousand
times, in America; for there the western sky is wont to
be set aflame with breadths and depths of color, with which
poets seek in vain to dye their verses, and which painters
never dare to copy. As beheld from the tower of Monte
Beni, the scene was tenderly magnificent, with mild gradations
of hue, and a lavish outpouring of gold, but rather
such gold as we see on the leaf of a bright flower than the
burnished glow of metal from the mine. Or, if metallic,
it looked airy and unsubstantial, like the glorified dreams
of an alchemist. And speedily — more speedily than in

our own clime — came the twilight and, brightening
through its gray transparency, the stars.

A swarm of minute insects that had been hovering all
day round the battlements were now swept away by the
freshness of a rising breeze. The two owls in the chamber
beneath Donatello's uttered their soft, melancholy
cry, — which, with national avoidance of harsh sounds,
Italian owls substitute for the hoot of their kindred in
other countries, — and flew darkling forth among the
shrubbery. A convent-bell rang out, near at hand, and
was not only echoed among the hills, but answered by
another bell, and still another, which doubtless had farther
and farther responses, at various distances along the
valley; for, like the English drum-beat around the globe,
there is a chain of convent-bells from end to end, and
cross-wise, and in all possible directions over priest-ridden
Italy.

“Come,” said the sculptor, “the evening air grows cool.
It is time to descend.”

“Time for you, my friend,” replied the Count, and he
hesitated a little before adding, “I must keep a vigil here
for some hours longer. It is my frequent custom to keep
vigils; and sometimes the thought occurs to me whether it
were not better to keep them in yonder convent, the bell of
which just now seemed to summon me. Would I do wisely
do you think, to exchange this old tower for a cell?”

“What! Turn monk?” exclaimed his friend. “A
horrible idea!”

“True,” said Donatello sighing. “Therefore, if at all,
I purpose doing it.”

“Then think of it no more, for Heaven's sake!” cried
the sculptor. “There are a thousand better and more
poignant methods of being miserable than that, if to be
miserable is what you wish. Nay; I question whether
a monk keeps himself up to the intellectual and spiritual
height which misery implies. A monk — I judge from
their sensual physiognomies, which meet me at every
turn — is inevitably a beast! Their souls, if they have
any to begin with, perish out of them, before their sluggish,
swinish existence is half done. Better, a million
times, to stand star-gazing on these airy battlements, than
to smother your new germ of a higher life in a monkish
cell!”

“You make me tremble,” said Donatello, “by your
bold aspersion of men who have devoted themselves to
God's service!”

“They serve neither God nor man, and themselves
least of all, though their motives be utterly selfish,” replied
Kenyon. “Avoid the convent, my dear friend, as
you would shun the death of the soul! But, for my own
part, if I had an insupportable burden, — if, for any
cause, I were bent upon sacrificing every earthly hope
as a peace-offering towards heaven, — I would make the
wide world my cell, and good deeds to mankind my
prayer. Many penitent men have done this, and found
peace in it.”

“Ah! but you are a heretic!” said the Count.

Yet his face brightened beneath the stars; and, looking
at it through the twilight, the sculptor's remembrance
went back to that scene in the Capitol, where, both in

features and expression, Donatello had seemed identical
with the Faun. And still there was a resemblance; for
now, when first the idea was suggested of living for the
welfare of his fellow-creatures, the original beauty, which
sorrow had partly effaced, came back elevated and spiritualized.
In the black depths, the Faun had found
a soul, and was struggling with it towards the light of
heaven.

The illumination, it is true, soon faded out of Donatello's
face. The idea of life-long and unselfish effort was
too high to be received by him with more than a momentary
comprehension. An Italian, indeed, seldom dreams
of being philanthropic, except in bestowing alms among
the paupers, who appeal to his beneficence at every step;
nor does it occur to him that there are fitter modes of
propitiating Heaven than by penances, pilgrimages, and
offerings at shrines. Perhaps, too, their system has its
share of moral advantages; they, at all events, cannot
well pride themselves, as our own more energetic benevolence
is apt to do, upon sharing in the counsels of Providence
and kindly helping out its otherwise impracticable
designs.

And now the broad valley twinkled with lights, that
glimmered through its duskiness, like the fire-flies in the
garden of a Florentine palace. A gleam of lightning
from the rear of the tempest showed the circumference
of hills, and the great space between, as the last cannon-flash
of a retreating army reddens across the field where
it has fought. The sculptor was on the point of descending
the turret-stair, when, somewhere in the darkness that

lay beneath them, a woman's voice was heard, singing a
low, sad strain.

“Hark!” said he, laying his hand on Donatello's arm.

And Donatello had said “Hark!” at the same instant.

The song, if song it could be called, that had only a wild
rhythm, and flowed forth in the fitful measure of a wind-harp,
did not clothe itself in the sharp brilliancy of the
Italian tongue. The words, so far as they could be distinguished,
were German, and therefore unintelligible to
the count, and hardly less so to the sculptor; being softened
and molten, as it were, into the melancholy richness
of the voice that sung them. It was as the murmur of a
soul bewildered amid the sinful gloom of earth, and retaining
only enough memory of a better state to make
sad music of the wail, which would else have been a despairing
shriek. Never was there profounder pathos than
breathed through that mysterious voice; it brought the
tears into the sculptor's eyes, with remembrances and
forebodings of whatever sorrow he had felt or apprehended;
it made Donatello sob, as chiming in with the
anguish that he found unutterable, and giving it the expression
which he vaguely sought.

But, when the emotion was at its profoundest depth,
the voice rose out of it, yet so gradually that a gloom
seemed to pervade it, far upward from the abyss, and not
entirely to fall away as it ascended into a higher and
purer region. At last, the auditors would have fancied
that the melody, with its rich sweetness all there, and
much of its sorrow gone, was floating around the very
summit of the tower.

“Donatello,” said the sculptor, when there was silence
again; “had that voice no message for your ear?”

“I dare not receive it,” said Donatello; “the anguish
of which it spoke abides with me: the hope dies away
with the breath that brought it hither. It is not good for
me to hear that voice.”

The sculptor sighed, and left the poor penitent keeping
his vigil on the tower.