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“Donatello,” playfully cried Miriam, “do not leave
us in this perplexity! Shake aside those brown curls,
my friend, and let us see whether this marvellous resemblance
extends to the very tips of the ears. If so, we
shall like you all the better!”

“No, no, dearest signorina,” answered Donatello, laughing,
but with a certain earnestness. “I entreat you to
take the tips of my ears for granted.” As he spoke, the
young Italian made a skip and jump, light enough for a
veritable faun; so as to place himself quite beyond the
reach of the fair hand that was outstretched, as if to settle
the matter by actual examination. “I shall be like a
wolf of the Apennines,” he continued, taking his stand on
the other side of the Dying Gladiator, “if you touch my
ears ever so softly. None of my race could endure it.
It has always been a tender point with my forefathers
and me.”

He spoke in Italian, with the Tuscan rusticity of accent,
and an unshaped sort of utterance, betokening that
he must heretofore have been chiefly conversant with
rural people.

[figure description] Page 024.[end figure description]

“Well, well,” said Miriam, “your tender point — your
two tender points, if you have them — shall be safe, so
far as I am concerned. But how strange this likeness is,
after all! and how delightful, if it really includes the
pointed ears! Oh, it is impossible, of course,” she continued,
in English, “with a real and commonplace young
man like Donatello; but you see how this peculiarity defines
the position of the Faun; and, while putting him
where he cannot exactly assert his brotherhood, still disposes
us kindly towards the kindred creature. He is not
supernatural, but just on the verge of nature, and yet
within it. What is the nameless charm of this idea,
Hilda? You can feel it more delicately than I.”

“It perplexes me,” said Hilda, thoughtfully, and shrinking
a little; “neither do I quite like to think about it.”

“But, surely,” said Kenyon, “you agree with Miriam
and me, that there is something very touching and impressive
in this statue of the Faun. In some long-past
age, he must really have existed. Nature needed, and
still needs, this beautiful creature; standing betwixt man
and animal, sympathizing with each, comprehending the
speech of either race, and interpreting the whole existence
of one to the other. What a pity that he has forever
vanished from the hard and dusty paths of life, —
unless,” added the sculptor, in a sportive whisper, “Donatello
be actually he!”

“You cannot conceive how this fantasy takes hold of
me,” responded Miriam, between jest and earnest. “Imagine,
now, a real being, similar to this mythic Faun;
how happy, how genial, how satisfactory would be his life,

[figure description] Page 025.[end figure description]

enjoying the warm, sensuous, earthy side of nature; revelling
in the merriment of woods and streams; living as
our four-footed kindred do, — as mankind did in its innocent
childhood; before sin, sorrow, or morality itself had
ever been thought of! Ah! Kenyon, if Hilda and you
and I — if I, at least, — had pointed ears! For I suppose
the Faun had no conscience, no remorse, no burthen
on the heart, no troublesome recollections of any sort;
no dark future either.”

“What a tragic tone was that last, Miriam!” said the
sculptor; and, looking into her face, he was startled to
behold it pale and tear-stained. “How suddenly this
mood has come over you!”

“Let it go as it came,” said Miriam, “like a thundershower
in this Roman sky. All is sunshine again, you
see!”

Donatello's refractoriness as regarded his ears had evidently
cost him something, and he now came close to
Miriam's side, gazing at her with an appealing air, as if
to solicit forgiveness. His mute, helpless gesture of entreaty
had something pathetic in it, and yet might well
enough excite a laugh, so like it was to what you may see
in the aspect of a hound when he thinks himself in fault
or disgrace. It was difficult to make out the character of
this young man. So full of animal life as he was, so joyous
in his deportment, so handsome, so physically well
developed, he made no impression of incompleteness, of
maimed or stinted nature. And yet, in social intercourse,
these familiar friends of his habitually and instinctively
allowed for him, as for a child or some other lawless

[figure description] Page 026.[end figure description]

thing, exacting no strict obedience to conventional rules,
and hardly noticing his eccentricities enough to pardon
them. There was an indefinable characteristic about
Donatello that set him outside of rules.

He caught Miriam's hand, kissed it, and gazed into her
eyes without saying a word. She smiled, and bestowed
on him a little careless caress, singularly like what one
would give to a pet dog when he puts himself in the way
to receive it. Not that it was so decided a caress either,
but only the merest touch, somewhere between a pat and
a tap of the finger; it might be a mark of fondness, or
perhaps a playful pretence of punishment. At all events,
it appeared to afford Donatello exquisite pleasure; insomuch
that he danced quite round the wooden railing that
fences in the Dying Gladiator.

“It is the very step of the Dancing Faun,” said Miriam
apart to Hilda. “What a child, or what a simpleton,
he is! I continually find myself treating Donatello as if
he were the merest unfledged chicken; and yet he can
claim no such privileges in the right of his tender age;
for he is at least — how old should you think him,
Hilda?”

“Twenty years, perhaps,” replied Hilda, glancing at
Donatello; “but, indeed, I cannot tell; hardly so old, on
second thoughts, or possibly older. He has nothing to
do with time, but has a look of eternal youth in his face.”

“All underwitted people have that look,” said Miriam,
scornfully.

“Donatello has certainly the gift of eternal youth, as
Hilda suggests,” observed Kenyon, laughing; “for,

[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]

judging by the date of this statue, which, I am more and
more convinced, Praxiteles carved on purpose for him, he
must be at least twenty-five centuries old, and he still
looks as young as ever.”

“What age have you, Donatello?” asked Miriam.

“Signorina, I do not know,” he answered; “no great
age, however; for I have only lived since I met you.”

“Now, what old man of society could have turned a
silly compliment more smartly than that!” exclaimed
Miriam. “Nature and art are just at one sometimes.
But what a happy ignorance is this of our friend Donatello!
Not to know his own age! It is equivalent to being
immortal on earth. If I could only forget mine!”

“It is too soon to wish that,” observed the sculptor;
“you are scarcely older than Donatello looks.”

“I shall be content, then,” rejoined Miriam, “if I could
only forget one day of all my life.” Then she seemed to
repent of this allusion, and hastily added, “A woman's
days are so tedious that it is a boon to leave even one of
them out of the account.”

The foregoing conversation had been carried on in a
mood in which all imaginative people, whether artists or
poets, love to indulge. In this frame of mind, they sometimes
find their profoundest truths side by side with the
idlest jest, and utter one or the other, apparently without
distinguishing which is the most valuable, or assigning any
considerable value to either. The resemblance between
the marble Faun and their living companion had made a
deep, half-serious, half-mirthful impression on these three
friends, and had taken them into a certain airy region,

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lifting up, as it is so pleasant to feel them lifted, their
heavy earthly feet from the actual soil of life. The world
had been set afloat, as it were, for a moment, and relieved
them for just so long of all customary responsibility for
what they thought and said.

It might be under this influence — or, perhaps, because
sculptors always abuse one another's works — that Kenyon
threw in a criticism upon the Dying Gladiator.

“I used to admire this statue exceedingly,” he remarked,
“but, latterly, I find myself getting weary and
annoyed that the man should be such a length of time
leaning on his arm in the very act of death. If he is so
terribly hurt, why does he not sink down and die without
further ado? Flitting moments, imminent emergencies,
imperceptible intervals between two breaths, ought not to
be encrusted with the eternal repose of marble; in any
sculptural subject, there should be a moral standstill,
since there must of necessity be a physical one. Otherwise,
it is like flinging a block of marble up into the air,
and by some trick or enchantment, causing it to stick
there. You feel that it ought to come down, and are
dissatisfied that it does not obey the natural law.”

“I see,” said Miriam, mischievously, “you think that
sculpture should be a sort of fossilizing process. But, in
truth, your frozen art has nothing like the scope and freedom
of Hilda's and mine. In painting there is no similar
objection to the representation of brief snatches of time;
perhaps, because a story can be so much more fully told
in picture, and buttressed about with circumstances that
give it an epoch. For instance, a painter never would

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have sent down yonder Faun out of his far antiquity,
lonely and desolate, with no companion to keep his simple
heart warm.”

“Ah, the Faun!” cried Hilda, with a little gesture of
impatience; “I have been looking at him too long; and
now, instead of a beautiful statue, immortally young, I
see only a corroded and discolored stone. This change is
very apt to occur in statues.”

“And a similar one in pictures, surely,” retorted the
sculptor. “It is the spectator's mood that transfigures
the Transfiguration itself. I defy any painter to move
and elevate me without my own consent and assistance.”

“Then you are deficient of a sense,” said Miriam.

The party now strayed onward from hall to hall of that
rich gallery, pausing here and there, to look at the multitude
of noble and lovely shapes, which have been dug up
out of the deep grave in which old Rome lies buried. And,
still, the realization of the antique Faun, in the person of
Donatello, gave a more vivid character to all these marble
ghosts. Why should not each statue grow warm with
life! Antinous might lift his brow, and tell us why he is
forever sad. The Lycian Apollo might strike his lyre;
and, at the first vibration, that other Faun in red marble,
who keeps up a motionless dance, should frisk gayly forth,
leading yonder Satyrs, with shaggy goat-shanks, to clatter
their little hoofs upon the floor, and all join hands with
Donatello! Bacchus, too, a rosy flush diffusing itself
over his time-stained surface, could come down from his
pedestal, and offer a cluster of purple grapes to Donatello's
lips; because the god recognizes him as the

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woodland elf who so often shared his revels. And here, in
this sarcophagus, the exquisitely carved figures might assume
life, and chase one another round its verge with that
wild merriment which is so strangely represented on those
old burial coffers; though still with some subtle allusion
to death, carefully veiled, but forever peeping forth amid
emblems of mirth and riot.

As the four friends descended the stairs, however, their
play of fancy subsided into a much more sombre mood; a
result apt to follow upon such exhilaration as that which
had so recently taken possession of them.

“Do you know,” said Miriam, confidentially to Hilda,
“I doubt the reality of this likeness of Donatello to the
Faun, which we have been talking so much about? To
say the truth, it never struck me so forcibly as it did Kenyon
and yourself, though I gave in to whatever you were
pleased to fancy, for the sake of a moment's mirth and
wonder.”

“I was certainly in earnest, and you seemed equally
so,” replied Hilda, glancing back at Donatello, as if to reassure
herself of the resemblance. “But faces change so
much, from hour to hour, that the same set of features
has often no keeping with itself; to an eye, at least, which
looks at expression more than outline. How sad and
sombre he has grown, all of a sudden!”

“Angry too, methinks! nay, it is anger much more
than sadness,” said Miriam. “I have seen Donatello in
this mood once or twice before. If you consider him
well, you will observe an odd mixture of the bull-dog, or
some other equally fierce brute, in our friend's

[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]

composition; a trait of savageness hardly to be expected in such
a gentle creature as he usually is. Donatello is a very
strange young man. I wish he would not haunt my footsteps
so continually.”

“You have bewitched the poor lad,” said the sculptor
laughing. “You have a faculty of bewitching people,
and it is providing you with a singular train of followers.
I see another of them behind yonder pillar; and it is his
presence that has aroused Donatello's wrath.”

They had now emerged from the gateway of the
palace; and partly concealed by one of the pillars of the
portico, stood a figure such as may often be encountered
in the streets and piazzas of Rome, and nowhere else.
He looked as if he might just have stepped out of a picture,
and, in truth, was likely enough to find his way into
a dozen pictures; being no other than one of those living
models, dark, bushy-bearded, wild of aspect and attire,
whom artists convert into saints or assassins, according as
their pictorial purposes demand.

“Miriam,” whispered Hilda, a little startled, “it is your
model!”

p576-037

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