“I thought of one, the other night, while I was gazing
at the stars,” answered Donatello; “but, pardon me, I do
not mean to tell it. One cause, however, of the longer
and healthier life of my forefathers, was, that they had
many pleasant customs, and means of making themselves
glad, and their guests and friends along with them. Now-a-days
we have but one!”

“And what is that?” asked the sculptor.

“You shall see!” said his young host.

By this time, he had ushered the sculptor into one of
the numberless saloons; and, calling for refreshment, old
Stella placed a cold fowl upon the table, and quickly followed
it with a savory omelet, which Girolamo had lost
no time in preparing. She also brought some cherries,
plums, and apricots, and a plate full of particularly delicate
figs, of last year's growth. The butler showing his
white head at the door, his master beckoned to him.

“Tomaso, bring some Sunshine!” said he.

The readiest method of obeying this order, one might
suppose, would have been, to fling wide the green window-blinds,
and let the glow of the summer noon into the carefully
shaded room. But, at Monte Beni, with provident
caution against the wintry days, when there is little sunshine,
and the rainy ones, when there is none, it was the
hereditary custom to keep their Sunshine stored away in
the cellar. Old Tomaso quickly produced some of it in a
small, straw-covered flask, out of which he extracted the
cork, and inserted a little cotton wool, to absorb the olive
oil that kept the precious liquid from the air.

“This is a wine,” observed the Count, “the secret of

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making which has been kept in our family for centuries
upon centuries; nor would it avail any man to steal the
secret, unless he could also steal the vineyard, in which
alone the Monte Beni grape can be produced. There is
little else left me, save that patch of vines. Taste some
of their juice, and tell me whether it is worthy to be
called Sunshine! for that is its name.”

“A glorious name, too!” cried the sculptor.

“Taste it,” said Donatello, filling his friend's glass and
pouring likewise a little into his own. “But first smell
its fragrance; for the wine is very lavish of it, and will
scatter it all abroad.”

“Ah, how exquisite!” said Kenyon. “No other wine
has a bouquet like this. The flavor must be rare indeed,
if it fulfil the promise of this fragrance, which is like the
airy sweetness of youthful hopes, that no realities will
ever satisfy!”

This invaluable liquor was of a pale golden hue, like
other of the rarest Italian wines, and, if carelessly and
irreligiously quaffed, might have been mistaken for a very
fine sort of Champagne. It was not, however, an effervescing
wine, although its delicate piquancy produced a
somewhat similar effect upon the palate. Sipping, the
guest longed to sip again; but the wine demanded so
deliberate a pause, in order to detect the hidden peculiarities
and subtle exquisiteness of its flavor, that to drink it
was really more a moral than a physical enjoyment.
There was a deliciousness in it that eluded analysis, and—
like whatever else is superlatively good — was perhaps
better appreciated in the memory than by present

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consciousness. One of its most ethereal charms lay in the
transitory life of the wine's richest qualities; for, while it
required a certain leisure and delay, yet, if you lingered
too long upon the draught, it became disenchanted both
of its fragrance and its flavor.

The lustre should not be forgotten, among the other
admirable endowments of the Monte Beni wine; for, as
it stood in Kenyon's glass, a little circle of light glowed
on the table round about it, as if it were really so much
golden sunshine.

“I feel myself a better man for that ethereal potation,”
observed the sculptor. “The finest Orvieto, or that
famous wine, the Est Est Est of Montefiascone, is vulgar
in comparison. This is surely the wine of the Golden
Age, such as Bacchus himself first taught mankind to
press from the choicest of his grapes. My dear Count,
why is it not illustrious? The pale, liquid gold, in every
such flask as that, might be solidified into golden scudi,
and would quickly make you a millionaire!”

Tomaso, the old butler, who was standing by the table,
and enjoying the praises of the wine quite as much as if
bestowed upon himself, made answer, —

“We have a tradition, signore,” said he, that this rare
wine of our vineyard would lose all its wonderful qualities,
if any of it were sent to market. The Counts of
Monte Beni have never parted with a single flask of it
for gold. At their banquets, in the olden time, they have
entertained princes, cardinals, and once an emperor, and
once a pope, with this delicious wine, and always, even to
this day, it has been their custom to let it flow freely,

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when those whom they love and honor sit at the board.
But the grand duke himself could not drink that wine,
except it were under this very roof!”

“What you tell me, my good friend,” replied Kenyon,
“makes me venerate the Sunshine of Monte Beni even
more abundantly than before. As I understand you, it is
a sort of consecrated juice, and symbolizes the holy virtues
of hospitality and social kindness?”

“Why, partly so, signore,” said the old butler, with a
shrewd twinkle in his eye; “but, to speak out all the
truth, there is another excellent reason why neither a
cask nor a flask of our precious vintage should ever be
sent to market. The wine, signore, is so fond of its
native home, that a transportation of even a few miles,
turns it quite sour. And yet it is a wine that keeps well
in the cellar, underneath this floor, and gathers fragrance,
flavor, and brightness in its dark dungeon. That very
flask of Sunshine, now, has kept itself for you, sir guest,
(as a maid reserves her sweetness till her lover comes
for it,) ever since a merry vintage-time, when the Signore
Count here was a boy!”

“You must not wait for Tomaso to end his discourse
about the wine, before drinking off your glass,” observed
Donatello. “When once the flask is uncorked, its finest
qualities lose little time in making their escape. I doubt
whether your last sip will be quite so delicious as you
found the first.”

And, in truth, the sculptor fancied that the Sunshine
became almost imperceptibly clouded, as he approached
the bottom of the flask. The effect of the wine, however,

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was a gentle exhilaration, which did not so speedily pass
away.

Being thus refreshed, Kenyon looked around him at
the antique saloon in which they sat. It was constructed
in a most ponderous style, with a stone floor, on which
heavy pilasters were planted against the wall, supporting
arches that crossed one another in the vaulted
ceiling. The upright walls, as well as the compartments
of the roof, were completely covered with frescoes,
which doubtless had been brilliant when first
executed, and perhaps for generations afterwards. The
designs were of a festive and joyous character, representing
Arcadian scenes, where nymphs, fauns, and satyrs,
disported themselves among mortal youths and maidens;
and Pan, and the god of wine, and he of sunshine and
music, disdained not to brighten some sylvan merry-making
with the scarcely veiled glory of their presence. A
wreath of dancing figures, in admirable variety of shape
and motion, was festooned quite round the cornice of the
room.

In its first splendor, the saloon must have presented an
aspect both gorgeous and enlivening; for it invested some
of the cheerfullest ideas and emotions of which the human
mind is susceptible with the external reality of beautiful
form, and rich, harmonious glow and variety of color.
But the frescoes were now very ancient. They had been
rubbed and scrubbed by old Stella and many a predecessor,
and had been defaced in one spot, and retouched in
another, and had peeled from the wall in patches, and had
hidden some of their brightest portions under dreary dust,

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till the joyousness had quite vanished out of them all.
It was often difficult to puzzle out the design; and even
where it was more readily intelligible, the figures showed
like the ghosts of dead and buried joys — the closer their
resemblance to the happy past, the gloomier now. For it
is thus, that with only an inconsiderable change, the gladdest
objects and existences become the saddest; hope fading
into disappointment; joy darkening into grief, and
festal splendor into funereal duskiness; and all evolving,
as their moral, a grim identity between gay things and
sorrowful ones. Only give them a little time, and they
turn out to be just alike!

“There has been much festivity in this saloon, if I
may judge by the character of its frescoes,” remarked
Kenyon, whose spirits were still upheld by the mild
potency of the Monte Beni wine. “Your forefathers,
my dear Count, must have been joyous fellows, keeping
up the vintage merriment throughout the year. It does
me good to think of them gladdening the hearts of men
and women, with their wine of Sunshine, even in the Iron
age, as Pan and Bacchus, whom we see yonder, did in the
Golden one!”

“Yes; there have been merry times in the banquethall
of Monte Beni, even within my own remembrance,”
replied Donatello, looking gravely at the painted walls.
“It was meant for mirth, as you see; and when I
brought my own cheerfulness into the saloon, these frescoes
looked cheerful too. But methinks they have all
faded, since I saw them last.”

“It would be a good idea,” said the sculptor, falling

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into his companion's vein, and helping him out with an
illustration which Donatello himself could not have put
into shape, “to convert this saloon into a chapel; and
when the priest tells his hearers of the instability of
earthly joys, and would show how drearily they vanish,
he may point to these pictures, that were so joyous, and
are so dismal. He could not illustrate his theme so aptly
in any other way.”

“True, indeed,” answered the Count, his former simplicity
strangely mixing itself up with an experience that
had changed him; “and yonder, where the minstrels
used to stand, the altar shall be placed. A sinful man
might do all the more effective penance in this old banquet-hall.”

“But I should regret to have suggested so ungenial a
transformation in your hospitable saloon,” continued Kenyon,
duly noting the change in Donatello's characteristics.
“You startle me, my friend, by so ascetic a design! It
would hardly have entered your head, when we first met.
Pray do not — if I may take the freedom of a somewhat
elder man to advise you,” added he, smiling — “pray do
not, under a notion of improvement, take upon yourself
to be sombre, thoughtful, and penitential, like all the rest
of us.”

Donatello made no answer, but sat awhile, appearing
to follow with his eyes one of the figures, which was repeated
many times over in the groups upon the walls and
ceiling. It formed the principal link of an allegory, by
which (as is often the case in such pictorial designs) the
whole series of frescoes were bound together, but which it

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would be impossible, or, at least, very wearisome, to unravel.
The sculptor's eyes took a similar direction, and
soon began to trace through the vicissitudes — once gay,
now sombre — in which the old artist had involved it, the
same individual figure. He fancied a resemblance in it to
Donatello himself; and it put him in mind of one of the
purposes with which he had come to Monte Beni.

“My dear Count,” said he, “I have a proposal to
make. You must let me employ a little of my leisure in
modelling your bust. You remember what a striking resemblance
we all of us — Hilda, Miriam, and I — found
between your features and those of the Faun of Praxiteles.
Then, it seemed an identity; but now that I know
your face better, the likeness is far less apparent. Your
head in marble would be a treasure to me. Shall I have
it?”

“I have a weakness which I fear I cannot overcome,”
replied the Count, turning away his face, “It troubles
me to be looked at steadfastly.”

“I have observed it since we have been sitting here,
though never before,” rejoined the sculptor. “It is a
kind of nervousness, I apprehend, which you caught in
the Roman air, and which grows upon you, in your solitary
life. It need be no hindrance to my taking your
bust; for I will catch the likeness and expression by side
glimpses, which (if portrait painters and bust makers did
but know it) always bring home richer results than a
broad stare.”

“You may take me if you have the power,” said Donatello;
but, even as he spoke, he turned away his face;

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“and if you can see what makes me shrink from you,
you are welcome to put it in the bust. It is not my will,
but my necessity, to avoid men's eyes. Only,” he added,
with a smile which made Kenyon doubt whether he might
not as well copy the Faun as model a new bust, “only,
you know, you must not insist on my uncovering these
ears of mine!”

“Nay; I never should dream of such a thing,” answered
the sculptor, laughing as the young count shook
his clustering curls. “I could not hope to persuade you,
remembering how Miriam once failed!”

Nothing is more unaccountable than the spell that
often lurks in a spoken word. A thought may be present
to the mind, so distinctly that no utterance could
make it more so; and two minds may be conscious of the
same thought, in which one or both take the profoundest
interest; but as long as it remains unspoken, their familiar
talk flows quietly over the hidden idea, as a rivulet
may sparkle and dimple over something sunken in its
bed. But, speak the word; and it is like bringing up a
drowned body out of the deepest pool of the rivulet,
which has been aware of the horrible secret all along, in
spite of its smiling surface.

And even so, when Kenyon chanced to make a distinct
reference to Donatello's relations with Miriam (though
the subject was already in both their minds), a ghastly
emotion rose up out of the depths of the young count's
heart. He trembled either with anger or terror, and
glared at the sculptor with wild eyes, like a wolf that

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meets you in the forest, and hesitates whether to flee or
turn to bay. But, as Kenyon still looked calmly at him,
his aspect gradually became less disturbed, though far
from resuming its former quietude.

“You have spoken her name,” said he, at last, in an
altered and tremulous tone; “tell me, now, all that you
know of her.”

“I scarcely think that I have any later intelligence
than yourself,” answered Kenyon; “Miriam left Rome
at about the time of your own departure. Within a day
or two after our last meeting at the Church of the Capuchins,
I called at her studio and found it vacant.
Whither she has gone, I cannot tell.”

Donatello asked no further questions.

They rose from table, and strolled together about the
premises, whiling away the afternoon with brief intervals
of unsatisfactory conversation, and many shadowy silences.
The sculptor had a perception of change in his
companion, — possibly of growth and development, but
certainly of change, — which saddened him, because it
took away much of the simple grace that was the best
of Donatello's peculiarities.

Kenyon betook himself to repose that night in a grim,
old, vaulted apartment, which, in the lapse of five or six
centuries, had probably been the birth, bridal, and death
chamber of a great many generations of the Monte Beni
family. He was aroused, soon after daylight, by the
clamor of a tribe of beggars who had taken their stand
in a little rustic lane that crept beside that portion of the

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villa, and were addressing their petitions to the open
windows. By-and-by, they appeared to have received
alms, and took their departure.

“Some charitable Christian has sent those vagabonds
away,” thought the sculptor, as he resumed his interrupted
nap; “who could it be? Donatello has his own
rooms in the tower; Stella, Tomaso, and the cook are a
world's width off; and I fancied myself the only inhabitant
in this part of the house.”

In the breadth and space which so delightfully characterize
an Italian villa, a dozen guests might have had
each his suite of apartments without infringing upon one
another's ample precincts. But, so far as Kenyon knew,
he was the only visitor beneath Donatello's widely extended
roof.