“Not soon, I am afraid,” acquiesced the sculptor.  “You are right, excellent Tomaso; the world is sadder now!”

And, in truth, while our friend smiled at these wild fables, he sighed in the same breath to think how the once genial earth produces, in every successive generation, fewer flowers than used to gladden the preceding ones.  Not that the modes and seeming possibilities of human enjoyment are rarer in our refined and softened era,—­on the contrary, they never before were nearly so abundant,—­but that mankind are getting so far beyond the childhood of their race that they scorn to be happy any longer.  A simple and joyous character can find no place for itself among the sage and sombre figures that would put his unsophisticated cheerfulness to shame.  The entire system of man’s affairs, as at present established, is built up purposely to exclude the careless and happy soul.  The very children would upbraid the wretched individual who should endeavor to take life and the world as w what we might naturally suppose them meant for—­a place and opportunity for enjoyment.

It is the iron rule in our day to require an object and a purpose in life.  It makes us all parts of a complicated scheme of progress, which can only result in our arrival at a colder and drearier region than we were born in.  It insists upon everybody’s adding somewhat—­a mite, perhaps, but earned by incessant effort—­to an accumulated pile of usefulness, of which the only use will be, to burden our posterity with even heavier thoughts and more inordinate labor than our own.  No life now wanders like an unfettered stream; there is a mill-wheel for the tiniest rivulet to turn.  We go all wrong, by too strenuous a resolution to go all right.

Therefore it was—­so, at least, the sculptor thought, although partly suspicious of Donatello’s darker misfortune—­that the young Count found it impossible nowadays to be what his forefathers had been.  He could not live their healthy life of animal spirits, in their sympathy with nature, and brotherhood with all that breathed around them.  Nature, in beast, fowl, and tree, and earth, flood, and sky, is what it was of old; but sin, care, and self-consciousness have set the human portion of the world askew; and thus the simplest character is ever the soonest to go astray.

“At any rate, Tomaso,” said Kenyon, doing his best to comfort the old man, “let us hope that your young lord will still enjoy himself at vintage time.  By the aspect of the vineyard, I judge that this will be a famous year for the golden wine of Monte Beni.  As long as your grapes produce that admirable liquor, sad as you think the world, neither the Count nor his guests will quite forget to smile.”

“Ah, Signore,” rejoined the butler with a sigh, “but he scarcely wets his lips with the sunny juice.”

“There is yet another hope,” observed Kenyon; “the young Count may fall in love, and bring home a fair and laughing wife to chase the gloom out of yonder old frescoed saloon.  Do you think he could do a better thing, my good Tomaso?”