The Marble Faun Volume 1 - Page 106/130

The door of the courtyard swung slowly, and closed itself of its own

accord. Miriam and Donatello were now alone there. She clasped her

hands, and looked wildly at the young man, whose form seemed to have

dilated, and whose eyes blazed with the fierce energy that had suddenly

inspired him. It had kindled him into a man; it had developed within him

an intelligence which was no native characteristic of the Donatello whom

we have heretofore known. But that simple and joyous creature was gone

forever.

"What have you done?" said Miriam, in a horror-stricken whisper.

The glow of rage was still lurid on Donatello's face, and now flashed

out again from his eyes.

"I did what ought to be done to a traitor!" he replied. "I did what your

eyes bade me do, when I asked them with mine, as I held the wretch over

the precipice!"

These last words struck Miriam like a bullet. Could it be so? Had her

eyes provoked or assented to this deed? She had not known it. But, alas!

looking back into the frenzy and turmoil of the scene just acted, she

could not deny--she was not sure whether it might be so, or no--that a

wild joy had flamed up in her heart, when she beheld her persecutor in

his mortal peril. Was it horror?--or ecstasy? or both in one? Be the

emotion what it might, it had blazed up more madly, when Donatello

flung his victim off the cliff, and more and more, while his shriek went

quivering downward. With the dead thump upon the stones below had come

an unutterable horror.

"And my eyes bade you do it!" repeated she.

They both leaned over the parapet, and gazed downward as earnestly as if

some inestimable treasure had fallen over, and were yet recoverable.

On the pavement below was a dark mass, lying in a heap, with little or

nothing human in its appearance, except that the hands were stretched

out, as if they might have clutched for a moment at the small square

stones. But there was no motion in them now. Miriam watched the heap of

mortality while she could count a hundred, which she took pains to do.

No stir; not a finger moved!

"You have killed him, Donatello! He is quite dead!" said she. "Stone

dead! Would I were so, too!"

"Did you not mean that he should die?" sternly asked Donatello, still in

the glow of that intelligence which passion had developed in him. "There

was short time to weigh the matter; but he had his trial in that breath

or two while I held him over the cliff, and his sentence in that one

glance, when your eyes responded to mine! Say that I have slain him

against your will,--say that he died without your whole consent,--and,

in another breath, you shall see me lying beside him."