en Age come back again within the
Precincts of this sunny glade, thawing mankind out of their cold
formalities, releasing them from irksome restraint, mingling them
together in such childlike gayety that new flowers (of which the old
bosom of the earth is full) sprang up beneath their footsteps. The sole
exception to the geniality of the moment, as we have understood, was
seen in a countryman of our own, who sneered at the spectacle, and
declined to compromise his dignity by making part of it.

The harper thrummed with rapid fingers; the violin player flashed his
bow back and forth across the strings; the flautist poured his breath in
quick puffs of jollity, while Donatello shook the tambourine above his
head, and led the merry throng with unweariable steps. As they followed
one another in a wild ring of mirth, it seemed the realization of one
of those bas-reliefs where a dance of nymphs, satyrs, or bacchanals
is twined around the circle of an antique vase; or it was like the
sculptured scene on the front and sides of a sarcophagus, where, as
often as any other device, a festive procession mocks the ashes and
white bones that are treasured up within. You might take it for a
marriage pageant; but after a while, if you look at these merry-makers,
following them from end to end of the marble coffin, you doubt whether
their gay movement is leading them to a happy close. A youth has
suddenly fallen in the dance; a chariot is overturned and broken,
flinging the charioteer headlong to the ground; a maiden seems to have
grown faint or weary, and is drooping on the bosom of a friend. Always
some tragic incident is shadowed forth or thrust sidelong into the
spectacle; and when once it has caught your eye you can look no more
at the festal portions of the scene, except with reference to this one
slightly suggested doom and sorrow.

As in its mirth, so in the darker characteristic here alluded to, there
was an analogy between the sculptured scene on the sarcophagus and the
wild dance which we have been describing. In the midst of its madness
and riot Miriam found herself suddenly confronted by a strange figure
that shook its fantastic garments in the air, and pranced before her on
its tiptoes, almost vying with the agility of Donatello himself. It was
the model.

A moment afterwards Donatello was aware that she had retired from the
dance. He hastened towards her, and flung himself on the grass beside
the stone bench on which Mir