ON THE BATTLEMENTS
The sculptor now looked through art embrasure, and threw down a bit of
lime, watching its fall, till it struck upon a stone bench at the rocky
foundation of the tower, and flew into many fragments.
“Pray pardon me for helping Time to crumble away your ancestral walls,”
said he. “But I am one of those persons who have a natural tendency to
climb heights, and to stand on the verge of them, measuring the depth
below. If I were to do just as I like, at this moment, I should fling
myself down after that bit of lime. It is a very singular temptation,
and all but irresistible; partly, I believe, because it might be so
easily done, and partly because such momentous consequences would ensue,
without my being compelled to wait a moment for them. Have you never
felt this strange impulse of an evil spirit at your back, shoving you
towards a precipice?”
“Ah, no!” cried. Donatello, shrinking from the battlemented wall with a
face of horror. “I cling to life in a way which you cannot conceive; it
has been so rich, so warm, so sunny!--and beyond its verge, nothing
but the chilly dark! And then a fall from a precipice is such an awful
death!”
“Nay; if it be a great height,” said Kenyon, “a man would leave his life
in the air, and never feel the hard shock at the bottom.”
“That is not the way with this kind of death!” exclaimed Donatello, in a
low, horror-stricken voice, which grew higher and more full of emotion
as he proceeded. “Imagine a fellow creature,--breathing now, and looking
you in the face,--and now tumbling down, down, down, with a long shriek
wavering after him, all the way! He does not leave his life in the air!
No; but it keeps in him till he thumps against the stones, a horribly
long while; then he lies there frightfully quiet, a dead heap of bruised
flesh and broken bones! A quiver runs through the crushed mass; and no
more movement after that! No; not if you would give your soul to make
him stir a finger! Ah, terrible! Yes, yes; I would fain fling myself
down for the very dread of it, that I might endure it once for all, and
dream of it no more!”
“How forcibly, how frightfully you conceive this!” said the sculptor,
aghast at the passionate horror which was betrayed in the Count’s words,
and still more in his wild gestures and ghastly look. “Nay, if the
height of your tower affects your imagination thus, you do wrong to
trust yourself here in solitude, and in the night-time, and at all
unguarded hours. You are not safe in your chamber. It is but a step or
two; and what if a vivid dream should lead you up hither at midnight,
and act itself out as a reality!”
Donatello had hidden his face in his hands, and was leaning against the
parapet.
“No fear of that!” said he. “Whatever the dream may be, I am too genuine
a coward to act out my own death in it.”
The paroxysm passed away, and the two friends continued their desultory
talk, very much as if no such interruption had occurred. Nevertheless,
it affected the sculptor with infinite pity to see this young man, who
had been born to gladness as an assured heritage, now involved in a
misty bewilderment of grievous thoughts, amid which he seemed to go
staggering blindfold. Kenyon, not without an unshaped suspicion of
the definite fact, knew that his condition must have resulted from the
weight and gloom of life, now first, through the agency of a secret
trouble, making themselves felt on a character that had heretofore
breathed only an atmosphere of joy. The effect of this hard lesson,
upon Donatello’s intellect and disposition, was very striking. It was
perceptible that he had already had glimpses of strange and subtle
matters in those dark caverns, into which all men must descend, if
they would know anything beneath the surface and illusive pleasures of
existence. And when they emerge, though dazzled and blinded by the first
glare of daylight, they take truer and sadder views of life forever
afterwards.
From some mysterious source, as the sculptor felt assured, a soul had
been inspired into the young Count’s simplicity, since their intercourse
in Rome. He now showed a far deeper sense, and an intelligence that
began to deal with high subjects, though in a feeble and childish way.
He evinced, too, a more definite and nobler individuality, but developed
out of grief and pain, and fearfully conscious of the pangs that had
given it birth. Every human life, if it ascends to truth or delves down
to reality, must undergo a similar change; but sometimes, perhaps, the
instruction comes without the sorrow; and oftener the sorrow teaches
no lesson that abides with us. In Donatello’s case, it was pitiful, and
almost ludicrous, to observe the confused struggle that he made; how
completely he was taken by surprise; how ill-prepared he stood, on this
old battlefield of the world, to fight with such an inevitable foe as
mortal calamity, and sin for its stronger ally.
“And yet,” thought Kenyon, “the poor fellow bears himself like a hero,
too! If he would only tell me his trouble, or give me an opening to
speak frankly about it, I might help him; but he finds it too horrible
to be uttered, and fancies himself the only mortal that ever felt the
anguish of remorse. Yes; he believes that nobody ever endured his agony
before; so that--sharp enough in itself--it has all the additional zest
of a torture just invented to plague him individually.”
The sculptor endeavored to dismiss the painful subject from his mind;
and, leaning against the battlements, he turned his face southward and
westward, and gazed across the breadth of the valley. His thoughts
flew far beyond even those wide boundaries, taking an air-line from
Donatello’s tower to another turret that ascended into the sky of the
summer afternoon, invisibly to him, above the roofs of distant Rome.
Then rose tumultuously into his consciousness that strong love for
Hilda, which it was his habit to confine in one of the heart’s inner
chambers, because he had found no encouragement to bring it forward. But
now he felt a strange pull at his heart-strings. It could not have been
more perceptible, if all the way between these battlements and Hilda’s
dove-cote had stretched an exquisitely sensitive cord, which, at the
hither end, was knotted with his aforesaid heart-strings, and, at the
remoter one, was grasped by a gentle hand. His breath grew tremulous. He
put his hand to his breast; so distinctly did he seem to feel that cord
drawn once, and again, and again, as if--though still it was bashfully
intimated there were an importunate demand for his presence. O for the
white wings of Hilda’s doves, that he might, have flown thither, and
alighted at the Virgin’s shrine!
But lovers, and Kenyon knew it well, project so lifelike a copy of
their mistresses out of their own imaginations, that it can pull at
the heartstrings almost as perceptibly as the genuine original. No airy
intimations are to be trusted; no evidences of responsive affection less
positive than whispered and broken words, or tender pressures of the
hand, allowed and half returned; or glances, that distil many passionate
avowals into one gleam of richly colored light. Even these should
be weighed rigorously, at the instant; for, in another instant, the
imagination seizes on them as its property, and stamps them with its
own arbitrary value. But Hilda’s maidenly reserve had given her lover no
such tokens, to be interpreted either by his hopes or fears.
“Yonder, over mountain and valley, lies Rome,” said the sculptor; “shall
you return thither in the autumn?”
“Never! I hate Rome,” answered Donatello; “and have good cause.”
“And yet it was a pleasant winter that we spent there,” observed
Kenyon, “and with pleasant friends about us. You would meet them again
there--all of them.”
“All?” asked Donatello.
“All, to the best of my belief,” said the sculptor: “but you need not go
to Rome to seek them. If there were one of those friends whose lifetime
was twisted with your own, I am enough of a fatalist to feel assured
that you will meet that one again, wander whither you may. Neither can
we escape the companions whom Providence assigns for us, by climbing an
old tower like this.”
“Yet the stairs are steep and dark,” rejoined the Count; “none but
yourself would seek me here, or find me, if they sought.”
As Donatello did not take advantage of this opening which his friend had
kindly afforded him to pour out his hidden troubles, the latter again
threw aside the subject, and returned to the enjoyment of the scene
before him. The thunder-storm, which he had beheld striding across the
valley, had passed to the left of Monte Beni, and was continuing its
march towards the hills that formed the boundary on the eastward.
Above the whole valley, indeed, the sky was heavy with tumbling vapors,
interspersed with which were tracts of blue, vividly brightened by the
sun; but, in the east, where the tempest was yet trailing its ragged
skirts, lay a dusky region of cloud and sullen mist, in which some of
the hills appeared of a dark purple hue. Others became so indistinct,
that the spectator could not tell rocky height from impalpable cloud.
Far into this misty cloud region, however,--within the domain of chaos,
as it were,--hilltops were seen brightening in the sunshine; they looked
like fragments of the world, broken adrift and based on nothingness,
or like portions of a sphere destined to exist, but not yet finally
compacted.
The sculptor, habitually drawing many of the images and illustrations
of his thoughts from the plastic art, fancied that the scene represented
the process of the Creator, when he held the new, imperfect earth in his
hand, and modelled it.
“What a magic is in mist and vapor among the mountains!” he exclaimed.
“With their help, one single scene becomes a thousand. The cloud scenery
gives such variety to a hilly landscape that it would be worth while to
journalize its aspect from hour to hour. A cloud, however,--as I have
myself experienced,--is apt to grow solid and as heavy as a stone the
instant that you take in hand to describe it, But, in my own heart,
I have found great use in clouds. Such silvery ones as those to the
northward, for example, have often suggested sculpturesque groups,
figures, and attitudes; they are especially rich in attitudes of living
repose, which a sculptor only hits upon by the rarest good fortune. When
I go back to my dear native land, the clouds along the horizon will be
my only gallery of art!”
“I can see cloud shapes, too,” said Donatello; “yonder is one that
shifts strangely; it has been like people whom I knew. And now, if I
watch it a little longer, it will take the figure of a monk reclining,
with his cowl about his head and drawn partly over his face, and--well!
did I not tell you so?”
“I think,” remarked Kenyon, “we can hardly be gazing at the same cloud.
What I behold is a reclining figure, to be sure, but feminine, and with
a despondent air, wonderfully well expressed in the wavering outline
from head to foot. It moves my very heart by something indefinable that
it suggests.”
“I see the figure, and almost the face,” said the Count; adding, in a
lower voice, “It is Miriam’s!”
“No, not Miriam’s,” answered the sculptor. While the two gazers thus
found their own reminiscences and presentiments floating among the
clouds, the day drew to its close, and now showed them the fair
spectacle of an Italian sunset. The sky was soft and bright, but not so
gorgeous as Kenyon had seen it, a thousand times, in America; for there
the western sky is wont to be set aflame with breadths and depths of
color with which poets seek in vain to dye their verses, and which
painters never dare to copy. As beheld from the tower of Monte Beni, the
scene was tenderly magnificent, with mild gradations of hue and a lavish
outpouring of gold, but rather such gold as we see on the leaf of a
bright flower than the burnished glow of metal from the mine. Or, if
metallic, it looked airy and unsubstantial, like the glorified dreams
of an alchemist. And speedily--more speedily than in our own clime--came
the twilight, and, brightening through its gray transparency, the stars.
A swarm of minute insects that had been hovering all day round the
battlements were now swept away by the freshness of a rising breeze.
The two owls in the chamber beneath Donatello’s uttered their soft
melancholy cry,--which, with national avoidance of harsh sounds, Italian
owls substitute for the hoot of their kindred in other countries,--and
flew darkling forth among the shrubbery. A convent bell rang out near at
hand, and was not only echoed among the hills, but answered by another
bell, and still another, which doubtless had farther and farther
responses, at various distances along the valley; for, like the English
drumbeat around the globe, there is a chain of convent bells from end
to end, and crosswise, and in all possible directions over priest-ridden
Italy.
“Come,” said the sculptor, “the evening air grows cool. It is time to
descend.”
“Time for you, my friend,” replied the Count; and he hesitated a little
before adding, “I must keep a vigil here for some hours longer. It is my
frequent custom to keep vigils,--and sometimes the thought occurs to me
whether it were not better to keep them in yonder convent, the bell of
which just now seemed to summon me. Should I do wisely, do you think, to
exchange this old tower for a cell?”
“What! Turn monk?” exclaimed his friend. “A horrible idea!”
“True,” said Donatello, sighing. “Therefore, if at all, I purpose doing
it.”
“Then think of it no more, for Heaven’s sake!” cried the sculptor.
“There are a thousand better and more poignant methods of being
miserable than that, if to be miserable is what you wish. Nay; I
question whether a monk keeps himself up to the intellectual and
spiritual height which misery implies. A monk I judge from their sensual
physiognomies, which meet me at every turn--is inevitably a beast! Their
souls, if they have any to begin with, perish out of them, before their
sluggish, swinish existence is half done. Better, a million times, to
stand star-gazing on these airy battlements, than to smother your new
germ of a higher life in a monkish cell!”
“You make me tremble,” said Donatello, “by your bold aspersion of men
who have devoted themselves to God’s service!”
“They serve neither God nor man, and themselves least of all, though
their motives be utterly selfish,” replied Kenyon. “Avoid the convent,
my dear friend, as you would shun the death of the soul! But, for my own
part, if I had an insupportable burden,--if, for any cause, I were
bent upon sacrificing every earthly hope as a peace-offering towards
Heaven,--I would make the wide world my cell, and good deeds to mankind
my prayer. Many penitent men have done this, and found peace in it.”
“Ah, but you are a heretic!” said the Count.
Yet his face brightened beneath the stars; and, looking at it through
the twilight, the sculptor’s remembrance went back to that scene in the
Capitol, where, both in features and expression, Donatello had seemed
identical with the Faun. And still there was a resemblance; for now,
when first the idea was suggested of living for the welfare of his
fellow-creatures, the original beauty, which sorrow had partly effaced,
came back elevated and spiritualized. In the black depths the Faun had
found a soul, and was struggling with it towards the light of heaven.
The illumination, it is true, soon faded out of Donatello’s face. The
idea of lifelong and unselfish effort was too high to be received by
him with more than a momentary comprehension. An Italian, indeed,
seldom dreams of being philanthropic, except in bestowing alms among the
paupers, who appeal to his beneficence at every step; nor does it
occur to him that there are fitter modes of propitiating Heaven than
by penances, pilgrimages, and offerings at shrines. Perhaps, too, their
system has its share of moral advantages; they, at all events, cannot
well pride themselves, as our own more energetic benevolence is apt to
do, upon sharing in the counsels of Providence and kindly helping out
its otherwise impracticable designs.
And now the broad valley twinkled with lights, that glimmered through
its duskiness like the fireflies in the garden of a Florentine palace. A
gleam of lightning from the rear of the tempest showed the circumference
of hills and the great space between, as the last cannon-flash of a
retreating army reddens across the field where it has fought. The
sculptor was on the point of descending the turret stair, when,
somewhere in the darkness that lay beneath them, a woman’s voice was
heard, singing a low, sad strain.
“Hark!” said he, laying his hand on Donatello’s arm.
And Donatello had said “Hark!” at the same instant.
The song, if song it could be called, that had only a wild rhythm, and
flowed forth in the fitful measure of a wind-harp, did not clothe itself
in the sharp brilliancy of the Italian tongue. The words, so far as they
could be distinguished, were German, and therefore unintelligible to the
Count, and hardly less so to the sculptor; being softened and molten,
as it were, into the melancholy richness of the voice that sung them. It
was as the murmur of a soul bewildered amid the sinful gloom of earth,
and retaining only enough memory of a better state to make sad music
of the wail, which would else have been a despairing shriek. Never was
there profounder pathos than breathed through that mysterious voice;
it brought the tears into the sculptor’s eyes, with remembrances and
forebodings of whatever sorrow he had felt or apprehended; it made
Donatello sob, as chiming in with the anguish that he found unutterable,
and giving it the expression which he vaguely sought.
But, when the emotion was at its profoundest depth, the voice rose out
of it, yet so gradually that a gloom seemed to pervade it, far upward
from the abyss, and not entirely to fall away as it ascended into a
higher and purer region. At last, the auditors would have fancied that
the melody, with its rich sweetness all there, and much of its sorrow
gone, was floating around the very summit of the tower.
“Donatello,” said the sculptor, when there was silence again, “had that
voice no message for your ear?”
“I dare not receive it,” said Donatello; “the anguish of which it spoke
abides with me: the hope dies away with the breath that brought it
hither. It is not good for me to hear that voice.”
The sculptor sighed, and left the poor penitent keeping his vigil on the
tower.