The harper thrummed with rapid fingers; the violin player flashed his

bow back and forth across the strings; the flautist poured his breath in

quick puffs of jollity, while Donatello shook the tambourine above his

head, and led the merry throng with unweariable steps. As they followed

one another in a wild ring of mirth, it seemed the realization of one

of those bas-reliefs where a dance of nymphs, satyrs, or bacchanals

is twined around the circle of an antique vase; or it was like the

sculptured scene on the front and sides of a sarcophagus, where, as

often as any other device, a festive procession mocks the ashes and

white bones that are treasured up within. You might take it for a

marriage pageant; but after a while, if you look at these merry-makers,

following them from end to end of the marble coffin, you doubt whether

their gay movement is leading them to a happy close. A youth has

suddenly fallen in the dance; a chariot is overturned and broken,

flinging the charioteer headlong to the ground; a maiden seems to have

grown faint or weary, and is drooping on the bosom of a friend. Always

some tragic incident is shadowed forth or thrust sidelong into the

spectacle; and when once it has caught your eye you can look no more

at the festal portions of the scene, except with reference to this one

slightly suggested doom and sorrow.

As in its mirth, so in the darker characteristic here alluded to, there

was an analogy between the sculptured scene on the sarcophagus and the

wild dance which we have been describing. In the midst of its madness

and riot Miriam found herself suddenly confronted by a strange figure

that shook its fantastic garments in the air, and pranced before her on

its tiptoes, almost vying with the agility of Donatello himself. It was

the model.

A moment afterwards Donatello was aware that she had retired from the

dance. He hastened towards her, and flung himself on the grass beside

the stone bench on which Miriam was sitting. But a strange distance and

unapproachableness had all at once enveloped her; and though he saw her

within reach of his arm, yet the light of her eyes seemed as far off as

that of a star, nor was there any warmth in the melancholy smile with

which she regarded him.

"Come back!" cried he. "Why should this happy hour end so soon?"

"It must end here, Donatello," said she, in answer to his words and

outstretched hand; "and such hours, I believe, do not often repeat

themselves in a lifetime. Let me go, my friend; let me vanish from you

quietly among the shadows of these trees. See, the companions of our

pastime are vanishing already!"

Whether it was that the harp-strings were broken, the violin out of

tune, or the flautist out of breath, so it chanced that the music had

ceased, and the dancers come abruptly to a pause. All that motley throng

of rioters was dissolved as suddenly as it had been drawn together. In

Miriam's remembrance the scene had a character of fantasy. It was as if

a company of satyrs, fauns, and nymphs, with Pan in the midst of them,

had been disporting themselves in these venerable woods only a moment

ago; and now in another moment, because some profane eye had looked at

them too closely, or some intruder had cast a shadow on their mirth,

the sylvan pageant had utterly disappeared. If a few of the merry-makers

lingered among the trees, they had hidden their racy peculiarities under

the garb and aspect of ordinary people, and sheltered themselves in the

weary commonplace of daily life. Just an instant before it was Arcadia

and the Golden Age. The spell being broken, it was now only that old

tract of pleasure ground, close by the people's gate of Rome,--a

tract where the crimes and calamities of ages, the many battles, blood

recklessly poured out, and deaths of myriads, have corrupted all the

soil, creating an influence that makes the air deadly to human lungs.




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