"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.




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