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; Iquestion 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.
