“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.