"I think, my dear Count, you have never read Dante," observed Kenyon.
"That idea is somewhat in his style, but I cannot help regretting that
it came into your mind just then."
The dark-robed figure had shrunk back, and was quite lost to sight among
the shadows of the chapel.
"There was an English poet," resumed Kenyon, turning again towards the
window, "who speaks of the 'dim, religious light,' transmitted through
painted glass. I always admired this richly descriptive phrase; but,
though he was once in Italy, I question whether Milton ever saw any
but the dingy pictures in the dusty windows of English cathedrals,
imperfectly shown by the gray English daylight. He would else have
illuminated that word 'dim' with some epithet that should not chase
away the dimness, yet should make it glow like a million of rubies,
sapphires, emeralds, and topazes. Is it not so with yonder window? The
pictures are most brilliant in themselves, yet dim with tenderness and
reverence, because God himself is shining through them."
"The pictures fill me with emotion, but not such as you seem to
experience," said Donatello. "I tremble at those awful saints; and, most
of all, at the figure above them. He glows with Divine wrath!"
"My dear friend," said Kenyon, "how strangely your eyes have transmuted
the expression of the figure! It is divine love, not wrath!"
"To my eyes," said Donatello stubbornly, "it is wrath, not love! Each
must interpret for himself."
The friends left the church, and looking up, from the exterior, at
the window which they had just been contemplating within, nothing; was
visible but the merest outline of dusky shapes, Neither the individual
likeness of saint, angel, nor Saviour, and far less the combined scheme
and purport of the picture, could anywise be made out. That miracle of
radiant art, thus viewed, was nothing better than an incomprehensible
obscurity, without a gleam of beauty to induce the beholder to attempt
unravelling it.
"All this," thought the sculptor, "is a most forcible emblem of the
different aspect of religious truth and sacred story, as viewed from the
warm interior of belief, or from its cold and dreary outside. Christian
faith is a grand cathedral, with divinely pictured windows. Standing
without, you see no glory, nor can possibly imagine any; standing
within, every ray of light reveals a harmony of unspeakable splendors."
After Kenyon and Donatello emerged from the church, however, they had
better opportunity for acts of charity and mercy than for religious
contemplation; being immediately surrounded by a swarm of beggars, who
are the present possessors of Italy, and share the spoil of the stranger
with the fleas and mosquitoes, their formidable allies. These pests--the
human ones--had hunted the two travellers at every stage of their
journey. From village to village, ragged boys and girls kept almost
under the horses' feet; hoary grandsires and grandames caught glimpses
of their approach, and hobbled to intercept them at some point of
vantage; blind men stared them out of countenance with their sightless
orbs; women held up their unwashed babies; cripples displayed their
wooden legs, their grievous scars, their dangling, boneless arms, their
broken backs, their burden of a hump, or whatever infirmity or deformity
Providence had assigned them for an inheritance. On the highest mountain
summit--in the most shadowy ravine--there was a beggar waiting for them.
In one small village, Kenyon had the curiosity to count merely how many
children were crying, whining, and bellowing all at once for alms. They
proved to be more than forty of as ragged and dirty little imps as any
in the world; besides whom, all the wrinkled matrons, and most of the
village maids, and not a few stalwart men, held out their hands grimly,
piteously, or smilingly in the forlorn hope of whatever trifle of
coin might remain in pockets already so fearfully taxed. Had they
been permitted, they would gladly have knelt down and worshipped the
travellers, and have cursed them, without rising from their knees, if
the expected boon failed to be awarded.