The sculptor was a good deal mortified, and perhaps a little angry: but
he knew Hilda's mood of gentle decision and independence too well not to
obey her. He therefore suffered the fearless maiden to return alone.
Meanwhile Miriam had not noticed the departure of the rest of the
company; she remained on the edge of the precipice and Donatello along
with her.
"It would be a fatal fall, still," she said to herself, looking over the
parapet, and shuddering as her eye measured the depth. "Yes; surely yes!
Even without the weight of an overburdened heart, a human body would
fall heavily enough upon those stones to shake all its joints asunder.
How soon it would be over!"
Donatello, of whose presence she was possibly not aware, now pressed
closer to her side; and he, too, like Miriam, bent over the low parapet
and trembled violently. Yet he seemed to feel that perilous fascination
which haunts the brow of precipices, tempting the unwary one to fling
himself over for the very horror of the thing; for, after drawing
hastily back, he again looked down, thrusting himself out farther than
before. He then stood silent a brief space, struggling, perhaps, to make
himself conscious of the historic associations of the scene.
"What are you thinking of, Donatello?" asked Miriam.
"Who are they," said he, looking earnestly in her face, "who have been
flung over here in days gone by?"
"Men that cumbered the world," she replied. "Men whose lives were the
bane of their fellow creatures. Men who poisoned the air, which is the
common breath of all, for their own selfish purposes. There was short
work with such men in old Roman times. Just in the moment of their
triumph, a hand, as of an avenging giant, clutched them, and dashed the
wretches down this precipice."
"Was it well done?" asked the young man.
"It was well done," answered Miriam; "innocent persons were saved by the
destruction of a guilty one, who deserved his doom."
While this brief conversation passed, Donatello had once or twice
glanced aside with a watchful air, just as a hound may often be seen to
take sidelong note of some suspicious object, while he gives his more
direct attention to something nearer at, hand. Miriam seemed now first
to become aware of the silence that had followed upon the cheerful talk
and laughter of a few moments before.
Looking round, she perceived that all her company of merry friends had
retired, and Hilda, too, in whose soft and quiet presence she had always
an indescribable feeling of security. All gone; and only herself and
Donatello left hanging over the brow of the ominous precipice.
Not so, however; not entirely alone! In the basement wall of the palace,
shaded from the moon, there was a deep, empty niche, that had probably
once contained a statue; not empty, either; for a figure now came forth
from it and approached Miriam. She must have had cause to dread some
unspeakable evil from this strange persecutor, and to know that this was
the very crisis of her calamity; for as he drew near, such a cold, sick
despair crept over her that it impeded her breath, and benumbed her
natural promptitude of thought. Miriam seemed dreamily to remember
falling on her knees; but, in her whole recollection of that wild
moment, she beheld herself as in a dim show, and could not well
distinguish what was done and suffered; no, not even whether she were
really an actor and sufferer in the scene.