The Marble Faun; Or, The Romance of Monte Beni - Volume 1

a castle) situated in a part of Tuscany somewhat remote from the ordinary track of tourists. Thither we must now accompany him, and endeavor to make our story

r once having yielded to the spell of the Eternal City. The artist, who contemplates an indefinite succession of winters in this home of art (though his first thought was merely to improve himself by a brief visit), goes forth, in the summer time, to sketch scenery and costume among the Tuscan hills, and pour, if he can, the purple air of Italy over his canvas. He studies the old schools of art in the mountain towns where they were born, and where they are still to be seen in the faded frescos of Giotto and Cimabue, on the walls of many a church, or in the dark chapels, in which the sacristan draws aside the veil from a treasured picture of Perugino. Thence, the happy painter goes

been hidden among the inequalities of the hillside, until the winding road brought him almost to the iron gateway. The sculptor found this substantial barrier fastened with lock and bolt. Ther

ture, the ivy would have mantled it from head to foot in a garment that might, by this time, have been centuries old, though ever new. In the dry Italian air, however, Nature had only so far adopted this old pile of stonework as to cover almost every hand's

erior towards the battlemented and machicolated summit. With this last-mentioned warlike garniture upon its stern old head and brow, the tower seemed evidently a stronghold of times long past. Many a crossbowman had shot his shafts from those windows and loop-holes, and from the vantage height of those gray battlements; many a fligh

, however, to a coat of stucco and yellow wash, which is a sort of renovation very much in vogue with the Italians. Kenyon noticed over a doorway, in the portion of the edi

orth another impatient summons. Happening, at the same moment, to look upward, he

ized the face, after a moment's doubt. "This is a warm reception, truly! Pra

ds, as it were; "old Tomaso and old Stella are both asleep, no doubt, and the rest

ear successively at each of the windows, as he descended. On every reappearance, he turned his face towards the sculptor and gave a nod an

s not the young friend whom he had known so familiarly in Rome; not the sylvan and untutored youth, whom Miriam, Hilda, and himself had

ned (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 mea

words more sharply than had been its wont, still there was a smile shining on his face, that, for the moment, q

eval sculpture hidden away in the churches hereabouts. An artist, whether painter or sculptor, may be pardoned for loitering through su

s, where he had just been standing. "But I thank my forefathers for building it so high. I l

lso looking up. "It is higher than Galileo's tower, which I

ents. There is a dismal old staircase to climb, however, before reaching the top, and a succession of dismal

d these ghostly, dimly lighted rooms, reminded Kenyon of the original Donate

fine. But I was not aware, my friend, that these were your country habits. I have fancied you in a sort of Arcadian life, tastin

" answered the Count gravely. "I am not a boy now.

had a kind of originality as coming from Donatello. He had thought it out from his o

the villa, with its iron-barred lower windows and balconied upp

ife in this vast house. A great-grandsire and all his descendants might find ample verge here, and with space, to

eping and dusting about the chambers, and Girolamo, the cook, who has but an idle life of it. He shall send you up a chicken

ged from a recess in the side of the house, where was a well, or reservoir, in which he had been cleansing a small wine cask; and a sunburnt contadino, in his shirt-sleeves, showed himself on the outskirts of the vin

e doors, opening into long suites of anterooms and saloons; on the third side, a stone staircase of spacious breadth, ascending, by dignified degrees and with wide resting-places, to another floor of similar extent. Through one of the

abode as this, and impart social warmth to such a wide world within doors. The sculptor confessed to himself, t

ghten it up!" he ejaculated,

outhful face as if it had seen thirty years of trouble; and, at the same moment, old Stella sh