The Marble Faun Volume 2 - Page 17/157

It is the iron rule in our day to require an object and a purpose in

life. It makes us all parts of a complicated scheme of progress, which

can only result in our arrival at a colder and drearier region than

we were born in. It insists upon everybody's adding somewhat--a mite,

perhaps, but earned by incessant effort--to an accumulated pile of

usefulness, of which the only use will be, to burden our posterity with

even heavier thoughts and more inordinate labor than our own. No life

now wanders like an unfettered stream; there is a mill-wheel for the

tiniest rivulet to turn. We go all wrong, by too strenuous a resolution

to go all right.

Therefore it was--so, at least, the sculptor thought, although partly

suspicious of Donatello's darker misfortune--that the young Count found

it impossible nowadays to be what his forefathers had been. He could

not live their healthy life of animal spirits, in their sympathy with

nature, and brotherhood with all that breathed around them. Nature, in

beast, fowl, and tree, and earth, flood, and sky, is what it was of old;

but sin, care, and self-consciousness have set the human portion of the

world askew; and thus the simplest character is ever the soonest to go

astray.

"At any rate, Tomaso," said Kenyon, doing his best to comfort the old

man, "let us hope that your young lord will still enjoy himself at

vintage time. By the aspect of the vineyard, I judge that this will be

a famous year for the golden wine of Monte Beni. As long as your grapes

produce that admirable liquor, sad as you think the world, neither the

Count nor his guests will quite forget to smile."

"Ah, Signore," rejoined the butler with a sigh, "but he scarcely wets

his lips with the sunny juice."

"There is yet another hope," observed Kenyon; "the young Count may fall

in love, and bring home a fair and laughing wife to chase the gloom out

of yonder old frescoed saloon. Do you think he could do a better thing,

my good Tomaso?"

"Maybe not, Signore," said the sage butler, looking earnestly at him;

"and, maybe, not a worse!"

The sculptor fancied that the good old man had it partly in his mind to

make some remark, or communicate some fact, which, on second thoughts,

he resolved to keep concealed in his own breast. He now took his

departure cellarward, shaking his white head and muttering to himself,

and did not reappear till dinner-time, when he favored Kenyon, whom he

had taken far into his good graces, with a choicer flask of Sunshine

than had yet blessed his palate.

To say the truth, this golden wine was no unnecessary ingredient towards

making the life of Monte Beni palatable. It seemed a pity that Donatello

did not drink a little more of it, and go jollily to bed at least,

even if he should awake with an accession of darker melancholy the next

morning.