period before chivalry put
forth its flower; and further still, we are almost afraid to say, it was
seen, though with a fainter and wavering course, in the early morn of
Christendom, when the Roman Empire had hardly begun to show symptoms of
decline. At that venerable distance, the heralds gave up the lineage in
despair.

But where written record left the genealogy of Monte Beni, tradition
took it up, and carried it without dread or shame beyond the Imperial
ages into the times of the Roman republic; beyond those, again, into the
epoch of kingly rule. Nor even so remotely among the mossy centuries did
it pause, but strayed onward into that gray antiquity of which there
is no token left, save its cavernous tombs, and a few bronzes, and some
quaintly wrought ornaments of gold, and gems with mystic figures and
inscriptions. There, or thereabouts, the line was supposed to have had
its origin in the sylvan life of Etruria, while Italy was yet guiltless
of Rome.

Of course, as we regret to say, the earlier and very much the larger
portion of this respectable descent--and the same is true of many
briefer pedigrees--must be looked upon as altogether mythical. Still,
it threw a romantic interest around the unquestionable antiquity of the
Monte Beni family, and over that tract of their own vines and fig-trees
beneath the shade of which they had unquestionably dwelt for immemorial
ages. And there they had laid the foundations of their tower, so long
ago that one half of its height was said to be sunken under the surface
and to hide subterranean chambers which once were cheerful with the
olden sunshine.

One story, or myth, that had mixed itself up with their mouldy
genealogy, interested the sculptor by its wild, and perhaps grotesque,
yet not unfascinating peculiarity. He caught at it the more eagerly,
as it afforded a shadowy and whimsical semblance of explanation for the
likeness which he, with Miriam and Hilda, had seen or fancied between
Donatello and the Faun of Praxiteles.

The Monte Beni family, as this legend averred, drew their origin
from the Pelasgic race, who peopled Italy in times that may be called
prehistoric. It was the same noble breed of men, of Asiatic birth,
that settled in Greece; the same happy and poetic kindred who dwelt in
Arcadia, and--whether they ever lived such life or not--enriched the
world with dreams, at least, and fables, lovely, if unsubstantial, of a
Golden Age. In those delicious times, wh