The Marble Faun Volume 1 - Page 85/130

"No wonder!" responded Miriam. "The expression suits the daintiness of

Michael's character, as Guido represents him. He never could have looked

the demon in the face!"

"Miriam!" exclaimed her friend reproachfully, "you grieve me, and you

know it, by pretending to speak contemptuously of the most beautiful and

the divinest figure that mortal painter ever drew."

"Forgive me, Hilda!" said Miriam. "You take these matters more

religiously than I can, for my life. Guido's Archangel is a fine

picture, of course, but it never impressed me as it does you."

"Well; we will not talk of that," answered Hilda. "What I wanted you to

notice, in this sketch, is the face of the demon. It is entirely unlike

the demon of the finished picture. Guido, you know, always affirmed that

the resemblance to Cardinal Pamfili was either casual or imaginary. Now,

here is the face as he first conceived it."

"And a more energetic demon, altogether, than that of the finished

picture," said Kenyon, taking the sketch into his hand. "What a spirit

is conveyed into the ugliness of this strong, writhing, squirming

dragon, under the Archangel's foot! Neither is the face an impossible

one. Upon my word, I have seen it somewhere, and on the shoulders of a

living man!"

"And so have I," said Hilda. "It was what struck me from the first."

"Donatello, look at this face!" cried Kenyon.

The young Italian, as may be supposed, took little interest in matters

of art, and seldom or never ventured an opinion respecting them. After

holding the sketch a single instant in his hand, he flung it from him

with a shudder of disgust and repugnance, and a frown that had all the

bitterness of hatred.

"I know the face well!" whispered he. "It is Miriam's model!"

It was acknowledged both by Kenyon and Hilda that they had detected, or

fancied, the resemblance which Donatello so strongly affirmed; and it

added not a little to the grotesque and weird character which, half

playfully, half seriously, they assigned to Miriam's attendant, to think

of him as personating the demon's part in a picture of more than two

centuries ago. Had Guido, in his effort to imagine the utmost of sin

and misery, which his pencil could represent, hit ideally upon just this

face? Or was it an actual portrait of somebody, that haunted the old

master, as Miriam was haunted now? Did the ominous shadow follow him

through all the sunshine of his earlier career, and into the gloom that

gathered about its close? And when Guido died, did the spectre betake

himself to those ancient sepulchres, there awaiting a new victim, till

it was Miriam's ill-hap to encounter him?

"I do not acknowledge the resemblance at all," said Miriam, looking

narrowly at the sketch; "and, as I have drawn the face twenty times, I

think you will own that I am the best judge."