"Donatello," said Miriam anxiously, as they came through the Piazza

Barberini, "what can I do for you, my beloved friend? You are shaking as

with the cold fit of the Roman fever." "Yes," said Donatello; "my heart

shivers." As soon as she could collect her thoughts, Miriam led the

young man to the gardens of the Villa Medici, hoping that the quiet

shade and sunshine of that delightful retreat would a little revive his

spirits. The grounds are there laid out in the old fashion of straight

paths, with borders of box, which form hedges of great height and

density, and are shorn and trimmed to the evenness of a wall of

stone, at the top and sides. There are green alleys, with long vistas

overshadowed by ilex-trees; and at each intersection of the paths, the

visitor finds seats of lichen-covered stone to repose upon, and marble

statues that look forlornly at him, regretful of their lost noses. In

the more open portions of the garden, before the sculptured front of

the villa, you see fountains and flower-beds, and in their season

a profusion of roses, from which the genial sun of Italy distils a

fragrance, to be scattered abroad by the no less genial breeze.

But Donatello drew no delight from these things. He walked onward in

silent apathy, and looked at Miriam with strangely half-awakened and

bewildered eyes, when she sought to bring his mind into sympathy with

hers, and so relieve his heart of the burden that lay lumpishly upon it.

She made him sit down on a stone bench, where two embowered alleys

crossed each other; so that they could discern the approach of any

casual intruder a long way down the path.

"My sweet friend," she said, taking one of his passive hands in both of

hers, "what can I say to comfort you?"

"Nothing!" replied Donatello, with sombre reserve. "Nothing will ever

comfort me."

"I accept my own misery," continued Miriam, "my own guilt, if guilt it

be; and, whether guilt or misery, I shall know how to deal with it. But

you, dearest friend, that were the rarest creature in all this world,

and seemed a being to whom sorrow could not cling,--you, whom I

half fancied to belong to a race that had vanished forever, you only

surviving, to show mankind how genial and how joyous life used to be, in

some long-gone age,--what had you to do with grief or crime?"

"They came to me as to other men," said Donatello broodingly. "Doubtless

I was born to them."

"No, no; they came with me," replied Miriam. "Mine is the

responsibility! Alas! wherefore was I born? Why did we ever meet? Why

did I not drive you from me, knowing for my heart foreboded it--that the

cloud in which I walked would likewise envelop you!"




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