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.