have dwelt, under their own
vines and fig-trees, from an unknown antiquity. His boyish passion
for Miriam has introduced him familiarly to our little circle; and our
republican and artistic simplicity of intercourse has included this
young Italian, on the same terms as one of ourselves. But, if we
paid due respect to rank and title, we should bend reverentially to
Donatello, and salute him as his Excellency the Count di Monte Beni."

"That is a droll idea, much droller than his being a Faun!" said
Hilda, laughing in her turn. "This does not quite satisfy me, however,
especially as you yourself recognized and acknowledged his wonderful
resemblance to the statue."

"Except as regards the pointed ears," said Kenyon; adding, aside, "and
one other little peculiarity, generally observable in the statues of
fauns."

"As for his Excellency the Count di Monte Beni's ears," replied Hilda,
smiling again at the dignity with which this title invested their
playful friend, "you know we could never see their shape, on account of
his clustering curls. Nay, I remember, he once started back, as shyly as
a wild deer, when Miriam made a pretence of examining them. How do you
explain that?"

"O, I certainly shall not contend against such a weight of evidence,
the fact of his faunship being otherwise so probable," answered the
sculptor, still hardly retaining his gravity. "Faun or not, Donatello or
the Count di Monte Beni--is a singularly wild creature, and, as I have
remarked on other occasions, though very gentle, does not love to be
touched. Speaking in no harsh sense, there is a great deal of animal
nature in him, as if he had been born in the woods, and had run wild all
his childhood, and were as yet but imperfectly domesticated. Life, even
in our day, is very simple and unsophisticated in some of the shaggy
nooks of the Apennines."

"It annoys me very much," said Hilda, "this inclination, which
most people have, to explain away the wonder and the mystery out
of everything. Why could not you allow me--and yourself, too--the
satisfaction of thinking him a Faun?"

"Pray keep your belief, dear Hilda, if it makes you any happier," said
the sculptor; "and I shall do my best to become a convert. Donatello has
asked me to spend the summer with him, in his ancestral tower, where
I purpose investigating the pedigree of these sylvan counts, his
forefathers; and if their shadows beckon me into dreamland, I shall
willingly follow. By the b