The Marble Faun Volume 2 - Page 3/157

The young Count--as perhaps we had better designate him in his ancestral

tower--vanished from the battlements; and Kenyon saw his figure

appear successively at each of the windows, as he descended. On every

reappearance, he turned his face towards the sculptor and gave a nod and

smile; for a kindly impulse prompted him thus to assure his visitor of a

welcome, after keeping him so long at an inhospitable threshold.

Kenyon, however (naturally and professionally expert at reading the

expression of the human countenance), had a vague sense that this was

not the young friend whom he had known so familiarly in Rome; not the

sylvan and untutored youth, whom Miriam, Hilda, and himself had liked,

laughed at, and sported with; not the Donatello whose identity they had

so playfully mixed up with that of the Faun of Praxiteles.

Finally, when his host had emerged from a side portal of the mansion,

and approached the gateway, the traveller still felt that there was

something lost, or something gained (he hardly knew which), that set the

Donatello of to-day irreconcilably at odds with him of yesterday. His

very gait showed it, in a certain gravity, a weight and measure of step,

that had nothing in common with the irregular buoyancy which used to

distinguish him. His face was paler and thinner, and the lips less full

and less apart.

"I have looked for you a long while," said Donatello; and, though his

voice sounded differently, and cut out its words more sharply than had

been its wont, still there was a smile shining on his face, that, for

the moment, quite brought back the Faun. "I shall be more cheerful,

perhaps, now that you have come. It is very solitary here."

"I have come slowly along, often lingering, often turning aside,"

replied Kenyon; "for I found a great deal to interest me in the

mediaeval sculpture hidden away in the churches hereabouts. An artist,

whether painter or sculptor, may be pardoned for loitering through such

a region. But what a fine old tower! Its tall front is like a page of

black letter, taken from the history of the Italian republics."

"I know little or nothing of its history," said the Count, glancing

upward at the battlements, where he had just been standing. "But I thank

my forefathers for building it so high. I like the windy summit better

than the world below, and spend much of my time there, nowadays."

"It is a pity you are not a star-gazer," observed Kenyon, also looking

up. "It is higher than Galileo's tower, which I saw, a week or two ago,

outside of the walls of Florence."

"A star-gazer? I am one," replied Donatello. "I sleep in the tower,

and often watch very late on the battlements. There is a dismal old

staircase to climb, however, before reaching the top, and a succession

of dismal chambers, from story to story. Some of them were prison

chambers in times past, as old Tomaso will tell you."