the button-hole eyelids, of that famous statue,
and its mouth such as nature never moulded, should see the genial
breadth of this far nobler and sweeter countenance. It is one of the few
works of antique sculpture in which we recognize womanhood, and that,
moreover, without prejudice to its divinity.

Here, then, was a treasure for the sculptor to have found! How happened
it to be lying there, beside its grave of twenty centuries? Why were not
the tidings of its discovery already noised abroad? The world was richer
than yesterday, by something far more precious than gold. Forgotten
beauty had come back, as beautiful as ever; a goddess had risen from her
long slumber, and was a goddess still. Another cabinet in the Vatican
was destined to shine as lustrously as that of the Apollo Belvedere;
or, if the aged pope should resign his claim, an emperor would woo this
tender marble, and win her as proudly as an imperial bride!

Such were the thoughts with which Kenyon exaggerated to himself the
importance of the newly discovered statue, and strove to feel at least
a portion of the interest which this event would have inspired in him a
little while before. But, in reality, he found it difficult to fix
his mind upon the subject. He could hardly, we fear, be reckoned a
consummate artist, because there was something dearer to him than his
art; and, by the greater strength of a human affection, the divine
statue seemed to fall asunder again, and become only a heap of worthless
fragments.

While the sculptor sat listlessly gazing at it, there was a sound of
small hoofs, clumsily galloping on the Campagna; and soon his frisky
acquaintance, the buffalo-calf, came and peeped over the edge of the
excavation. Almost at the same moment he heard voices, which approached
nearer and nearer; a man's voice, and a feminine one, talking the
musical tongue of Italy. Besides the hairy visage of his four footed
friend, Kenyon now saw the figures of a peasant and a contadina, making
gestures of salutation to him, on the opposite verge of the hollow
space.

CHAPTER XLVII

THE PEASANT AND CONTADINA

They descended into the excavation: a young peasant, in the short blue
jacket, the small-clothes buttoned at the knee, and buckled shoes, that
compose one of the ugliest dresses ever worn by man, except the wearer's
form have a grace which any garb, or the nudity of an antique statue,
would equally set off; and, hand in hand with him, a