bare use, and turn the tap off instantly after. There is something
very disappointing in this; and the knowledge of that dearth of water,
of those two taps symbolical of chronic drought, is positively
disheartening. Beautiful proportions, delicate patterns, gracious
effigies of the Madonna and the angels we can have, and also the most
lovely garlands. But we cannot have a fountain. For it is useless
calling this a fountain, this poor little trough with two taps....

But you _shall_ have a fountain! Giovanni della Robbia answers in his
heart; or, at least, you shall _feel_ as if you had one! And here we
may witness, if we use the eyes of the spirit as well as of the body,
one of the strangest miracles of art, when art is married to a
purpose. The idea of a fountain, the desirability of water, becomes,
unconsciously, dominant in the artist's mind; and under its sway, as
under the divining rod, there trickle and well up every kind of
thought, of feeling, about water; until the images thereof, visible,
audible, tactile, unite and steep and submerge every other notion.
Nothing deliberate; and, in all probability, nothing even conscious;
those watery thoughts merely lapping dreamily round, like a half-heard
murmur of rivers, the waking work with which his mind is busy. Nothing
deliberate or conscious, but all the more inevitable and efficacious,
this multifold suggestion of water.

And behold the result, the witness of the miracle: In the domed
sacristy, the fountain cooling this sultry afternoon of June as it has
cooled four hundred Junes and more since set up, arch and pilasters
and statued gables hung with garlands by that particular Robbia;
cooling and refreshing us with its empty trough and closed taps,
without a drop of real water! For it is made of water itself, or the
essence, the longing memory of water. It is water, this shining pale
amber and agate and grass-green tiling and wainscotting, starred at
regular intervals by wide-spread patterns as of floating weeds; water
which makes the glossiness of the great leaf-garlands and the
juiciness of the smooth lemons and cool pears and pomegranates; water
which has washed into ineffable freshness this piece of blue heaven
within the gable; and water, you would say, as of some shining
fountain in the dusk, which has gathered together into the white
glistening bodies and draperies which stand out against that
newly-washed aether. All this is evident, and yet insufficient to