“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.