Beneath the crucifix, on a table, lay a human skull, which looked as if
it might have been dug up out of some old grave. But, examining it
more closely, Kenyon saw that it was carved in gray alabaster; most
skillfully done to the death, with accurate imitation of the teeth,
the sutures, the empty eye-caverns, and the fragile little bones of the
nose. This hideous emblem rested on a cushion of white marble, so nicely
wrought that you seemed to see the impression of the heavy skull in a
silken and downy substance.
Donatello dipped his fingers into the holy-water vase, and crossed
himself. After doing so he trembled.
"I have no right to make the sacred symbol on a sinful breast!" he said.
"On what mortal breast can it be made, then?" asked the sculptor. "Is
there one that hides no sin?"
"But these blessed emblems make you smile, I fear," resumed the Count,
looking askance at his friend. "You heretics, I know, attempt to pray
without even a crucifix to kneel at."
"I, at least, whom you call a heretic, reverence that holy symbol,"
answered Kenyon. "What I am most inclined to murmur at is this death's
head. I could laugh, moreover, in its ugly face! It is absurdly
monstrous, my dear friend, thus to fling the dead weight of our
mortality upon our immortal hopes. While we live on earth, 't is true,
we must needs carry our skeletons about with us; but, for Heaven's sake,
do not let us burden our spirits with them, in our feeble efforts to
soar upward! Believe me, it will change the whole aspect of death, if
you can once disconnect it, in your idea, with that corruption from
which it disengages our higher part."
"I do not well understand you," said Donatello; and he took up the
alabaster skull, shuddering, and evidently feeling it a kind of penance
to touch it. "I only know that this skull has been in my family for
centuries. Old Tomaso has a story that it was copied by a famous
sculptor from the skull of that same unhappy knight who loved the
fountain lady, and lost her by a blood-stain. He lived and died with a
deep sense of sin upon him, and on his death-bed he ordained that this
token of him should go down to his posterity. And my forefathers, being
a cheerful race of men in their natural disposition, found it needful to
have the skull often before their eyes, because they dearly loved life
and its enjoyments, and hated the very thought of death."
"I am afraid," said Kenyon, "they liked it none the better, for seeing
its face under this abominable mask."
Without further discussion, the Count led the way up one more flight of
stairs, at the end of which they emerged upon the summit of the tower.
The sculptor felt as if his being were suddenly magnified a hundredfold;
so wide was the Umbrian valley that suddenly opened before him, set in
its grand framework of nearer and more distant hills. It seemed as if
all Italy lay under his eyes in that one picture. For there was the
broad, sunny smile of God, which we fancy to be spread over that favored
land more abundantly than on other regions, and beneath it glowed a
most rich and varied fertility. The trim vineyards were there, and the
fig-trees, and the mulberries, and the smoky-hued tracts of the olive
orchards; there, too, were fields of every kind of grain, among which,
waved the Indian corn, putting Kenyon in mind of the fondly remembered
acres of his father's homestead. White villas, gray convents, church
spires, villages, towns, each with its battlemented walls and towered
gateway, were scattered upon this spacious map; a river gleamed across
it; and lakes opened their blue eyes in its face, reflecting heaven,
lest mortals should forget that better land when they beheld the earth
so beautiful.