In truth, Donatello’s countenance indicated a healthier spirit than while he was brooding in his melancholy tower.  The change of scene, the breaking up of custom, the fresh flow of incidents, the sense of being homeless, and therefore free, had done something for our poor Faun; these circumstances had at least promoted a reaction, which might else have been slower in its progress.  Then, no doubt, the bright day, the gay spectacle of the market place, and the sympathetic exhilaration of so many people’s cheerfulness, had each their suitable effect on a temper naturally prone to be glad.  Perhaps, too, he was magnetically conscious of a presence that formerly sufficed to make him happy.  Be the cause what it might, Donatello’s eyes shone with a serene and hopeful expression while looking upward at the bronze pope, to whose widely diffused blessing, it may be, he attributed all this good influence.

“Yes, my dear friend,” said he, in reply to the sculptor’s remark, “I feel the blessing upon my spirit.”

“It is wonderful,” said Kenyon, with a smile, “wonderful and delightful to think how long a good man’s beneficence may be potent, even after his death.  How great, then, must have been the efficacy of this excellent pontiff’s blessing while he was alive!”

“I have heard,” remarked the Count, “that there was a brazen image set up in the wilderness, the sight of which healed the Israelites of their poisonous and rankling wounds.  If it be the Blessed Virgin’s pleasure, why should not this holy image before us do me equal good?  A wound has long been rankling in my soul, and filling it with poison.”

“I did wrong to smile,” answered Kenyon.  “It is not for me to limit Providence in its operations on man’s spirit.”

While they stood talking, the clock in the neighboring cathedral told the hour, with twelve reverberating strokes, which it flung down upon the crowded market place, as if warning one and all to take advantage of the bronze pontiff’s benediction, or of Heaven’s blessing, however proffered, before the opportunity were lost.

“High noon,” said the sculptor.  “It is Miriam’s hour!”

CHAPTER XXXV

THE BRONZE PONTIFF’S BENEDICTION

When the last of the twelve strokes had fallen from the cathedral clock, Kenyon threw his eyes over the busy scene of the market place, expecting to discern Miriam somewhere in the ’crowd.  He looked next towards the cathedral itself, where it was reasonable to imagine that she might have taken shelter, while awaiting her appointed time.  Seeing no trace of her in either direction, his eyes came back from their quest somewhat disappointed, and rested on a figure which was leaning, like Donatello and himself, on the iron balustrade that surrounded the statue.  Only a moment before, they two had been alone.

It was the figure of a woman, with her head bowed on her hands, as if she deeply felt—­what we have been endeavoring to convey into our feeble description—­the benign and awe-inspiring influence which the pontiff’s statue exercises upon a sensitive spectator.  No matter though it were modelled for a Catholic chief priest, the desolate heart, whatever be its religion, recognizes in that image the likeness of a father.