d never
been drowned, and had clambered to the topmost branches of tall trees
without ever breaking his neck. No such mischance could happen to the
sylvan child because, handling all the elements of nature so fearlessly
and freely, nothing had either the power or the will to do him harm.

He grew up, said these humble friends, the playmate not only of all
mortal kind, but of creatures of the woods; although, when Kenyon
pressed them for some particulars of this latter mode of companionship,
they could remember little more than a few anecdotes of a pet fox, which
used to growl and snap at everybody save Donatello himself.

But they enlarged--and never were weary of the theme--upon the
blithesome effects of Donatello's presence in his rosy childhood and
budding youth. Their hovels had always glowed like sunshine when he
entered them; so that, as the peasants expressed it, their young master
had never darkened a doorway in his life. He was the soul of vintage
festivals. While he was a mere infant, scarcely able to run alone, it
had been the custom to make him tread the winepress with his tender
little feet, if it were only to crush one cluster of the grapes. And the
grape-juice that gushed beneath his childish tread, be it ever so small
in quantity, sufficed to impart a pleasant flavor to a whole cask of
wine. The race of Monte Beni--so these rustic chroniclers assured
the sculptor--had possessed the gift from the oldest of old times of
expressing good wine from ordinary grapes, and a ravishing liquor from
the choice growth of their vineyard.

In a word, as he listened to such tales as these, Kenyon could have
imagined that the valleys and hillsides about him were a veritable
Arcadia; and that Donatello was not merely a sylvan faun, but the genial
wine god in his very person. Making many allowances for the poetic
fancies of Italian peasants, he set it down for fact that his friend, in
a simple way and among rustic folks, had been an exceedingly delightful
fellow in his younger days.

But the contadini sometimes added, shaking their heads and sighing, that
the young Count was sadly changed since he went to Rome. The village
girls now missed the merry smile with which he used to greet them.

The sculptor inquired of his good friend Tomaso, whether he, too,
had noticed the shadow which was said to have recently fallen over
Donatello's life.

"Ah, yes, Signore!" answered the old butler, "it is even so, since
he came bac